Rebalancing the Oral Microbiome After a chance discovery in a child’s plaque, a microbiologist and a clinician-scientist are rethinking caries prevention by harnessing good bacteria instead of fighting the bad. In a University of Toronto lab, surrounded by petri dishes and colonies of bacteria, Dr. Céline Lévesque is trying to change the way we think about oral health, not by killing bacteria, but seeing how the two might coexist. Dr. Lévesque has spent her career studying bacteria. “I’ve been doing microbiology for a long time,” she says. “Undergrad, master’s, PhD, postdoc—all in microbiology. I’ve never wanted to do anything else.” Her early fascination lay in how microbes evolve to resist antibiotics. But during her PhD at Laval University, she discovered her true calling: the delicate ecosystem of the mouth. Working with oral microbial communities— what she calls “the oral ecology”—transformed her outlook. “I find exploring oral ecology fun,” she says. “That’s my philosophy, as well. You have to enjoy research, because nine out of ten experiments fail. You need laughter in the lab.” Dr. Prasanna Neelakantan, one of Dr. Lévesque’s collaborators in research, is a specialist in conservative dentistry and endodontics. “I’m a dentist,” he says. “I trained and practised in India. I had two clinics and taught at a dental school, but I was always curious about why some patients healed beautifully while others developed infections that were hard to treat.” That curiosity led him to pursue a PhD at the Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam, and later to Dr. Céline Lévesque is a professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry. Dr. Lévesque held the Canada Research Chair in Oral Microbial Genetics for 10 years (2011-21). 27 Issue 2 | 2026 |
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