Summary of Activity
One of the aims of oral surgical treatment is recovery of oral functions, including chewing, swallowing, speaking, etc. These functions are lost by injury, diseases, surgical treatment, and so forth. They are very important, because they are directly related to human's everyday life. Therefore, researches in our department are mainly focused on development of new modalities for the evaluation and treatment of oral functional disturbance. Since oral function is very complicated, basic researches are important as well as clinical researches and the most important thing is the organic link of these two.

Research Projects
Current research interests in our department are as follows:
*Development of new diagnostic modalities for oral cancer and improvement of therapeutic outcome
*Evaluation long-term morphological changes of TMJ component in TMJ disorder patients
*Development of new diagnostic modalities for Candida and dry mouth
*Development of new dental implant support system
*Development of cultured epithelial graft using amniotic membrane
*Apoptosis of oral cancer

1. Kurita H., Yamamoto E., Nozaki S., Wada S., Furuta I., Miyata M., Kurashina K. (2009) Multicenter phase 2 study of induction chemotherapy with docetaxel and nedaplatin for oral squamous cell carcinoma. Cancer Chemother Pharmacol 65:503-508.


2. Kurita H., Kamata T., Zhao C., Narikawa J., Koike T., Kurashina K. (2009) Usefulness of a commercial enzyme-linked immnosorbent assay kit for Candida mannan antigen for detecting Candida in oral rinse solutions. Oral Med Oral Surg Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod 107: 531-534.


3. Kurita H., Kamata T., Koike T., Kobayashi H., Kurashina K. (2008) Intraoperative Tissue Staining of Invaded Oral Carcinoma. Pathol Oncol Res 14: 461-465.


4. Kurita H., Sakai H., Kamata T., Koike T., Kobayashi H., Kurashina K. (2008) Accuracy of intraoperative tissue staining in delineating deep surgical margins in oral carcinoma surgery. Oral Oncology 44: 935-940.


5. Kurokawa A., Nagata M., Kitamura N., Noman A.A., Ohnishi M., Ohyama T., Kobayashi T., Shingaki S., Takagi R.; for the Oral Maxillofacial Pathology and Surgery Group. (2008) Diagnostic Value of Integrin a3, b4, and b5 Gene Expression Levels for the Clinical Outcome of Tongue Squamous Cell Carcinoma. Cancer 112: 1272-1281.


6. Zhao C., Hosoya A., Kurita H., Hu T., Hiraga T., Ninomiya T., Yoshiba K., Yoshiba N., Takahashi M., Kurashina K., Ozawa H., and Nakamura H.（2007）Immunohistochemical study of hard tissue formation in the rat pulp cavity after tooth replantation. Oral Biology 52: 945-953.


7. Nishizawa R., Nagata M., Noman A. A., Kitamura N., Fujita H., Hoshina H., Kubota T., Itagaki M., Shingaki S., Ohnishi M., Kurita H., et al. (2007) The 2G allele of promoter region of Matrix metalloproteinase-1 as an essential pre-condition for the early onset of oral squamous cell carcinoma. BMC Cancer 7:187-.


8. Kurita H., Chen Z., Uehara S., Miyazawa H. and Kurashina K. (2007) Comparison of imaging follow-up between joints with arthroscopic surgery (lysis and lavage) and those with nonsurgical treatment. J Oral Maxilolofac Surg 65; 1309-1314.


9. Kobayashi H., Koike T., Nakatsuka A., Kurita H., Sagara J., Taniguchi S., Kurashina K. (2005) Dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase expression predicts survival outcome and chemosensitivity to 5-fluorouracil in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma. Oral Oncol 41:38-47.


10. Kobayashi H, Sagara J, Kurita H, Morifuji M, Ohishi M, Kurashina K, Taniguchi S. (2004) Clinical significance of cellular distribution of moesin in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma. Clin Cancer Res 10:572-580.