The 2020 Santé Awards recognized Walter Siqueira, DDS, PhD, with an Excellence Award for the Top Establishment Grant: Biomedical. The Excellence Awards honor the top-ranked applications in the past year’s Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation (SHRF) funding competitions.
This is the first time that a faculty member at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) College of Dentistry has received an Excellence Award. Siqueira is a full professor and associate dean, academic.
Siqueira submitted the research, “An Innovative Chair-Side Diagnostic Method for Detection of Periodontal Disease Activity Based on Histatin 5 Degradation Rate,” along with dental assisting program instructor Christine Downing and associate professor Francisco Otero-Cagide, DDS.
The project was selected for an Excellence Award from all health sciences and medical research projects in the province. It plans to use saliva, specifically salivary enzymes and activity on histatin-5, for the diagnosis of periodontal disease.
As periodontitis is one of the most common chronic diseases in Canada, the university said, there is an urgent need to develop a method to diagnose it based on its activity.
“This is an outstanding accomplishment for both Dr. Siqueira and the College of Dentistry,” said Doug Brothwell, DMD, BED, MSc, DDPH, dean of the College of Dentistry. “This is the first Excellence Award received by anyone in the college, and I congratulate Dr. Siqueira on this well-deserved recognition.”
“There are a significant number of excellent and groundbreaking research projects submitted to SHRF each year, and it is an honor for me that mine has been selected for an Excellence Award and to accept this prestigious award,” Siqueira said.
“This is the first time that our college has been recognized with this award. I would like to recognize and thank my co-applicants, Christine Downing and Dr. Francisco Otero-Cagide, for their work on this project and the College of Dentistry and USask for their continued support of my research,” he said.
“These supports make this type of research project possible. The award demonstrates that the College of Dentistry has an outstanding research project at the level of the prominent research programs from this province,” he said.
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