Making competency-based predoctoral orthodontics fun: Introducing Dealodontics.

OBJECTIVES: Dealodontics is a card game developed at New York University College of Dentistry for dental students to reinforce and apply basic orthodontic concepts. Dealodontics incorporates clinical photographs and questions to assess students' skills in diagnosis and patient management. The game was designed to be an enjoyable, interactive, and collaborative learning experience, supplementing competency-based instruction. The purpose of this project was to present this novel educational method and to evaluate dental students' engagement and game-playing experience. METHODS: The survey was modeled after the "Game Experience Questionnaire" and followed the same methodology collapsing 16 survey questions into eight categories. The 5-point Likert scale was collapsed into a 3-point graduated scale (negative, neutral, and positive). Results were tabulated and scored using methods developed by IJsselsteijn et.al. Comparisons were made between two years: 2019 (N = 385) and 2021 (N = 245). Additionally, students were asked an open-ended question, to list three words to describe the game-playing experience. RESULTS: Response rates declined from 72% in 2019 to 50.2% in 2021. Response trends were similar: Positive gameplay experiences (competence, positive affect, immersion, challenge, and learning) and lack of negative experiences (tension/annoyance, negative affect). In the category of flow, 2021 responses were more positive (42.68%) when compared to the responses in 2019 (38.3%). Open-ended responses were similar with "fun" being the most commonly occurring word. CONCLUSIONS: Dealodontics is an effective and engaging tool for learning which can be used to supplement traditional methods.

Hypoxia augments outgrowth endothelial cell (OEC) sprouting and directed migration in response to sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P).

Therapeutic angiogenesis provides a promising approach to treat ischemic cardiovascular diseases through the delivery of proangiogenic cells and/or molecules. Outgrowth endothelial cells (OECs) are vascular progenitor cells that are especially suited for therapeutic strategies given their ease of noninvasive isolation from umbilical cord or adult peripheral blood and their potent ability to enhance tissue neovascularization. These cells are recruited to sites of vascular injury or tissue ischemia and directly incorporate within native vascular endothelium to participate in neovessel formation. A better understanding of how OEC activity may be boosted under hypoxia with external stimulation by proangiogenic molecules remains a challenge to improving their therapeutic potential. While vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is widely established as a critical factor for initiating angiogenesis, sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P), a bioactive lysophospholipid, has recently gained great enthusiasm as a potential mediator in neovascularization strategies. This study tests the hypothesis that hypoxia and the presence of VEGF impact the angiogenic response of OECs to S1P stimulation in vitro. We found that hypoxia altered the dynamically regulated S1P receptor 1 (S1PR1) expression on OECs in the presence of S1P (1.0 µM) and/or VEGF (1.3 nM). The combined stimuli of S1P and VEGF together promoted OEC angiogenic activity as assessed by proliferation, wound healing, 3D sprouting, and directed migration under both normoxia and hypoxia. Hypoxia substantially augmented the response to S1P alone, resulting in ~6.5-fold and ~25-fold increases in sprouting and directed migration, respectively. Overall, this report highlights the importance of establishing hypoxic conditions in vitro when studying ischemia-related angiogenic strategies employing vascular progenitor cells.