María Inés Gonzalez Agurto, PhD

As a dentist and oral rehabilitation specialist with a PhD in protein biochemistry and molecular biology from King’s College London (2020) I have focused my career on addressing the oral health challenges in ageing populations, particularly those undergoing head and neck cancer treatments.

My clinical teaching since 2011 exposed me to the adverse oral side effects of systemic diseases and cancer therapies, which impair vital functions like communication and mastication due to reduced salivary flow and severe caries. This clinical experience motivated my PhD research under Professor Avijit Banerjee. I examined cancer therapy side effects, such as radiotherapy-induced caries, xerostomia, and radiation oral mucositis (ROM), in head and neck cancer patients. Supported by Beca Chile doctorate and Universidad de los Andes grants, I worked with elderly cancer patients, assessing salivary proteins to understand their role in oral side effects and exploring predictive models for ROM severity.

After completing my PhD, I pursued postdoctoral research with Professor Guy Carpenter, investigating the interactions between salivary and plant-based proteins relevant to oral lubrication and food perception.

Since returning to Chile in 2022, I have integrated my research with clinical teaching focused on the elderly population’s oral health needs, collaborating with public health, epidemiology, tribology teams, pediatric dentistry, and the Instituto Nacional del Cancer. I have developed a network witSUNY/Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, contributing to two publications which are the base for the study of metabolomics in saliva from head and neck cancer patients.

In addition, I am creating a project to assess salivary protein’s association with obesity development to determine a risk score based on salivary proteins’ ability to prevent side effects in adults and the elderly. In the same pattern, I am developing a project to determine salivary biomarkers regarding caries lesions in children to determine the risk population to prevent this disease

I am currently the secretary of the research committee at my university’s faculty of dentistry, mentoring students in research projects and leading initiatives to improve oral health in Chile’s ageing population.

• Oral rehabilitation
• Salivary biochemical composition
• Oral microbiome and metabolomics in HN cancer patients
• Salivary biomarkers regarding systemic and oral diseases
• Xerostomia
• Salivary glands function in elderly

• Salivary proteins regarding ageing
• Head and neck cancer side effects
• Mucosal lubrication
• Caries
• Systemic diseases in children