Spotlight: Vanessa Mendes, Clinical collaborator

“I’m really all about collaborating with clinicians from other specialties and basic scientists,” says assistant professor Vanessa Mendes, who this January took on the role of director of the graduate specialty program in periodontics, as vice dean, education, associate professor Jim Lai, stepped down. “One of my goals is to foster clinical research in our discipline and strengthen collaboration with various research teams,” Mendes adds.

With a strong background in research, Mendes knows exactly what she’s after. She obtained her DDS from the Universidade Federal de Uberlandia (UFU, Brazil) in 1993, followed by specialty training in oral and maxillofacial surgery, which she completed in 1997. After teaching for two years in the discipline of OMFS at UFU, she pursued a  Master’s degree in Dentistry, area of OMFS, which was completed in 2000 at Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Araçatuba Campus, followed by a PhD, also completed at UNESP Araçatuba in 2004.

It was during her PhD that Mendes first came to Canada, where she performed research on the osseointegration of dental implants in grafted sites in the labs of J. E. Davies, professor at the Faculty of Dentistry and the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering. Davies’ internationally renowned research was already familiar to Mendes. “I came across his work while I was a PhD student in Brazil and was fascinated by his publications on bone engineering and mechanisms of peri-implant healing,” she says.

"The work of our residents and clinical instructors is beautiful."

In 2004, Mendes returned to Davies’ lab as a postdoctoral fellow. She stayed for six years, immersing herself in peri-implant healing, bone tissue engineering and stem cell work. Then, in 2010, Mendes was given an opportunity to teach anatomy at the Faculty of Dentistry. In 2011, she was accepted into the graduate specialty program in periodontics while she continued to teach. Completing her MSc Perio at U of T Dentistry in 2015, Mendes — who had pursued research on strategies to enhance bone healing — began teaching periodontics at both graduate and undergraduate levels.

That led to collaboration within the Faculty, as well. Mendes recently paired with graduate specialty program director, assistant professor Marco Caminiti, to teach a graduate anatomy course.

“Our vision is to create relevant didactic materials on surgical anatomy to benefit clinicians of different specialties,” claims Mendes, who additionally hopes that this collaboration sparks stronger ties between periodontics and oral surgery residents.

Mendes’ overall vision for the graduate specialty program is a seamless integration between clinical and foundational research. Collaborations with industry, for instance, would allow program residents to think outside the box for new techniques and materials to save teeth. “I think we have so much potential here to do more clinical research, and that’s one of the things I’d like to do: foster this potential for clinical research.”

As the fruits of those collaborations, Mendes also hopes to encourage more publications from program residents.

“The work of our residents and clinical instructors is beautiful,” Mendes says, “it deserves to be showcased to the world.”

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Photo: Vanessa Mendes (Jeff Comber)