Dr. Walter Siqueira receives SHRF Excellence Award

At the 2020 Santé Awards Dr. Walter Siqueira (DDS, PhD), full professor and associate dean, academic, in the College of Dentistry, received an Excellence Award for the Top Establishment Grant: Biomedical. The Excellence Awards recognize the top-ranked applications in the past year’s funding competitions.

This is the first time a faculty member in the USask College of Dentistry has received an Excellence Award. The project for which Dr. Siqueira received the award is titled, “An innovative chair-side diagnostic method for detection of periodontal disease activity based on histatin 5 degradation rate”, which he submitted along with co-applicants Christine Downing, an instructor in the Dental Assisting program, and Dr. Francisco Otero-Cagide, an associate professor in the college. This project was selected for an Excellence Award from all health sciences and medical research projects in the province.

“This is an outstanding accomplishment for both Dr. Siqueira and the College of Dentistry.” Said Dr. Doug Brothwell, 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.”

The project 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, there is an urgent need to develop a method to diagnoses periodontitis based on the activity of the disease.

“There are a significant number of excellent and groundbreaking research projects submitted to SHRF each year, and it is an honour for me that mine has been selected for an Excellence Award and to accept this prestigious award.” Said Siqueira. “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, these supports make this type of research project possible. This award demonstrates that the College of Dentistry has an outstanding research project at the level of the prominent research programs from this province.”

Numerous USask researchers were presented with 2020 Santé Awards. Click here for a full list of recipients.