Wright Receives Class of 1958 Clinical Research Award

The Class of 1958 Distinguished Clinical Research Award has been awarded to John Timothy Wright, a professor in the department of pediatric dentistry at the UNC-CH School of Dentistry. The award, presented annually by the Dental Foundation of North Carolina Inc., recognizes the UNC-CH School of Dentistry's most relevant research activity published during the academic year. Wright was honored for his research efforts in the newly emerging field of genomics.

Members of the School of Dentistry's Class of 1958 established the Distinguished Clinical Research Award in 1985 under the leadership of Jack Atwater '58 of Asheboro, N.C. Atwater and other class members established an endowment fund that currently provides $3,000 each year to the award's recipient. The published faculty research selected for recognition must have "the greatest potential for direct contributions to the practice of dentistry and dental health generally."

Wright's work, in collaboration with researcher Thomas Hart of the University of Pittsburgh, seeks to identify the genes responsible for several debilitating craniofacial abnormalities. His published research on one such abnormality, Tricho-Dento-Osseous Syndrome, earned him the Class of 1958 Award. The award's selection committee said that Wright's published work, "Phenotypic Variation of the Tricho-Dento-Osseous Syndrome with a DLX3 Homeobox Gene Mutation," could help dentists everywhere better diagnose and eventually treat this condition. Wright, who received his DDS from West Virginia University in 1978 and his MS in pediatric dentistry from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1983, is a diplomate of the American Board of Pediatric Dentistry. His other interests include enamel protein chemistry, genetics and the mechanisms of dentin/enamel defects.

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