Özlem Yilmaz, DDS, Ph.D.

Professor
Department: Oral Health Sciences
Programs: Inflammation, End Organ Disease

 

 

Research Interests:

Dr. Yilmaz received her DDS from Istanbul University in Istanbul, Turkey, and her PhD in Oral Biology from the University of Washington, Seattle, where she also pursued post-doctoral work in the department of Global Health and was a visiting fellow in the Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. She was a faculty in Periodontology and Oral Biology and also an inaugural resident member of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida, Gainesville prior to joining the Departments of Oral Health Sciences and Microbiology and Immunology at MUSC.

Dr. Yilmaz combines her unique backgrounds in oral microbiology and epithelial cell biology to expand our insight at an important frontier of disease research, host-pathogen interaction. This is a particularly active area of research in the field of oral health, which stands at the gateway to gastrointestinal tract. The publications from her lab and others in the last decade have cultivated the growing awareness that periodontal disease and chronic oral mucosal infection may play a significant factor in the development of other chronic diseases, including orodigestive cancers and Alzheimer’s disease.

Her lab has a long-running interest in the pathogenic and immune-evasion mechanisms deployed by the opportunistic periodontal pathogens such as, Porphyromonas gingivalis. Their research efforts have included the pioneering development of imaging technologies for the assessment of anerobic bacterial invasion in situ, as well as detailed exploration of the microbial molecules and mechanisms involved in evading or blocking immune signaling, facilitating chronic intracellular bacterial colonization, modulating specific host autophagy, oxidative stress, inflammasome, and cell death pathways in a manner that predisposes the oral mucosal cells to the development of dysbiosis and oral cancer.

Currently, the Yilmaz lab has a particular focus on the role of pro-inflammatory nucleotide signaling pathways in the pathophysiology of P. gingivalis-related diseases.

Publications:

PubMed Collection