Impact of Vitamin D on the Chemopreventive Efficacy of Erlotinib against Oral Cancer

The outbreak of COVID-19 has changed the practice of medicine in a fundamental manner resulting in sweeping changes in healthcare virtually across all medical specialties. Dentistry, in particular, has been dramatically affected by this pandemic, given the close 'person-to-person' contact involved in delivering dental care and treatment procedures that produce aerosols and often result in the dental health care professional (DHCP) contact/exposure to blood, saliva and respiratory droplets. Specifically, the pandemic has led to adaptations to diagnostic and treatment paradigms, modifications to clinical workflow and dental/oral care delivery models. Given that the pandemic is still on-going, the magnitude of the impact of these modified oral health care delivery models, especially in high-risk patient populations (e.g. cancer patients) is not known. This application for a "Urgent Competitive Revision to Existing NIH Grants (Urgent Supplement)" is being submitted in response to PA-18-935 to request supplemental funding to the R01DE024595 (PI: Seshadri, Mukund). The research proposed in this supplement was specifically developed in response to the recent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic to assess the impact of dental care delivery delays in cancer patients. The proposal is of immediate and high impact to NIDCR.