UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry joins $17M national effort to transform jaw pain treatment

A team of oral and maxillofacial surgeons from UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry is helping lead a $17 million national research initiative — one of the largest ever focused on jaw pain — to better understand and treat temporomandibular disorders. These painful jaw conditions, known as TMDs, affect more than 10 million Americans.

CREATE (Collaborative for REsearch to Advance TMD Evidence), funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, brings together leading experts from five major universities: the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Florida, the University at Buffalo, Texas A&M University, and UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry.

Representing the School of Dentistry on the project are co-investigators Simon W. Young, DDS, MD, PhD, professor, director of research, and interim chair; Craig Pearl, BDS, MSD, associate professor; and Mark E. Wong, DDS, professor and chair of the Bernard and Gloria Pepper Katz Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.

Together, they will lead the Houston site’s contribution to the most comprehensive TMD clinical study ever conducted.

“For too long, TMD has been treated through trial and error,” Young said. “Our goal is to identify the biological and neurological mechanisms driving this pain so we can provide personalized, effective treatment instead of one-size-fits-all care.”

At the School of Dentistry, study participants will undergo advanced imaging such as MRI and CT scans, as well as jaw motion tracking and “deep pain phenotyping” — a detailed assessment of how the jaw joint, nerves, and brain interact in chronic pain. Using artificial intelligence and computational modeling, investigators will search for biomarkers that explain why some patients recover quickly while others develop persistent pain.

These efforts are part of the National Institutes of Health’s TMD IMPACT (IMproving PAtient-Centered Translational Research) initiative, which seeks to bridge clinical and laboratory research. Insights from patient imaging and biological samples will guide preclinical models that replicate jaw pain mechanisms, accelerating the testing of new therapies before clinical trials.

“The CREATE Center will provide a critical bridge between the clinic and the lab,” Wong said. “By connecting what we see in patients to what we study at the cellular level, we can move much faster toward real-world solutions for chronic jaw pain.”

Beyond research, CREATE will train the next generation of clinicians and scientists to deliver evidence-based TMD care. The initiative also includes national outreach efforts — partnering with organizations such as the TMJ Association — to ensure new discoveries reach both health professionals and patients.

Pearl emphasized that the program’s collaborative approach is key to making progress in such a complex field.

“TMDs are multifactorial, involving biology, behavior, and biomechanics,” Pearl said. “By combining expertise from multiple disciplines and institutions, we’re building the most detailed understanding yet of how these disorders develop — and how to stop them.”

CREATE’s five-year research program aims to define distinct TMD subtypes, much like cancer classifications, to match each patient to the most effective treatment. By identifying biological signatures and symptom patterns, the study will lay the groundwork for precision medicine in jaw pain, moving beyond generalized care to targeted, personalized therapies. Across five national sites, researchers will follow 1,000 individuals with TMD and 300 pain-free volunteers, generating the most comprehensive dataset to date on these complex conditions.

“This collaboration represents a turning point for TMD research,” Young said. “We’re not just collecting data — we’re creating a foundation for precision medicine in jaw pain.”