NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — Bugs with a deadly bite. Waterborne pathogens that threaten our health. Bad breath and gum disease.
These are some of the practical problems being tackled by students involved in the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, a federally funded program meant to broaden participation among underrepresented minorities in the STEM fields.
The students’ hard work manifested itself in the form of research posters on display this week at the LSAMP Research Symposium 2016.
Poster No. 85—titled Porphyromonas Gingivalis Vima-Vime is Collectively Involved in Virulence Modulation—belonged to Samuel Bagley, 19, a sophomore biomedical science major at Oakwood University.
He said the statistics on the porphyromonas gingivalis show that one out of two adults over the age of 30 suffer from the disease but that what often gets overlooked is that the rates for the gum disease are significantly higher among minorities. He and his team of researchers were searching for a way to deliver a cure for the disease—associated with a host of problems that range from bad breath to diabetes—via toothpaste.
“If you don’t have African-Americans studying the disease, we may not get the cures we need, the treatments we need as a population because the people studying it aren’t necessarily looking out for our best interests,” said Bagley, an aspiring MD Ph.D.
