Overview

SOMI is an integrated research platform focusing on studies on the oral microbiome, oral biofilms and salivary biomarkers in clinical cohorts to effectively untangle the increasingly complex oral-systemic associations using advanced technologies such as genomics, proteomics and metabolomics.

SOMI aims to:

Explore the healthy and disease-perturbed oral microbiome associated with oral and systemic diseases
Develop novel therapeutics that modulate the disease-perturbed microbiome towards health
Develop point-of-care diagnostics for oral and systemic diseases using oral microbial and salivary biomarkers

Background

The oral microbiome is one of the most diverse and complex microbiomes in the human body. Dysbiosis of oral microbiome may have a potential effect on distant body sites as the microbiota disperse and gain access to the systemic circulation¹. The oral microbiota has been shown to be associated with a number of systemic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory tract infections, gastrointestinal diseases and adverse gestational outcomes.

The SOMI research platform has been established to understand the pathobiology of oral infectious diseases and the link between oral microbiome and systemic diseases. SOMI aims to bridge the current knowledge gaps in our understanding of the oral-systemic link by multi-OMICS (genomics, proteomics and metabolomics) analysis of clinical samples pertaining to oral and systemic diseases. The high diversity of clinical cases at NDCS makes SOMI strategically well positioned to recruit the multitude of clinical cohorts required for these studies.

At SOMI, a multidisciplinary team of dental clinicians, dental clinician-scientists and platform experts works together to facilitate the identification of relevant clinical problems, investigation of the underlying pathogenesis mechanisms, development of innovative solutions and translation of these innovations into clinical practice.

¹Han YW, Wang X. Mobile microbiome: oral bacteria in extra-oral infections and inflammation. Journal of Dental Research. 2013;92:485-91.

Key Research Areas

Oral Microbiome	Oral Biofilms	Salivary Biomarkers
Pathobiology of oral infectious diseases Link with systemic diseases	Anti-biofilm agents and devices Microbiome-modulation therapy	Diagnostic and prognostic salivary biomarkers for systemic diseases Salivary biomarkers for various nutritional statuses

Core Research Platforms

SOMI has three core research platforms to support our key research areas – technical, diagnostic and therapeutic. The applications of these platforms are summarised in the table below.

	Oral Microbiome	Oral Biofilms	Salivary Biomarkers
Technical	Metagenomics Metaproteomics	Transcriptomics Animal models	Proteomics Metabolomics
Diagnostic	Health vs disease-specific microbial signatures	In vitro, ex vivo screening models	Point-of-care devices
Therapeutic	Microbiome modulation therapy	Small-molecule based drug discovery Anti-biofilm devices	Nano-encapsulated artificial saliva