Back in 2020, the world shut down in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As healthcare workers and researchers worldwide worked tirelessly to help people in need and the world faced much uncertainty, Kevin Matthew Byrd, D.D.S., Ph.D., and a team of researchers asked the crucial question: Does the virus affect the mouth directly, and if so, can saliva spread the virus?

What started as an online discussion became an intricate study. The group of researchers spread out across the world and shared their findings and analysis. It was a collaborative effort from the start to the very end.

“One of the biggest challenges was the need to move rapidly while ensuring rigor and scientific integrity,” said Byrd. “We were trying to answer fundamental questions in real-time, with global public health implications. The only way we overcame these challenges was through collaboration: with Dr. Blake Warner and his network of colleagues at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with Dr. Richard Boucher and those he leads within the Marsico Lung Institute at the University of North Carolina and international research partners with committed lab teams who worked tirelessly under difficult conditions. It was an effort that truly transcended disciplines and institutions.”

SARS-CoV-2 rapidly infected millions of people around the world in a short period of time. Scientists and medical professionals worked tirelessly to learn how the virus was transmitted, how to prevent the spread, and how best to help those infected. 

SARS-CoV-2 challenged our understanding of how respiratory viruses spread and which tissues were most affected. While much of the early focus centered on the lungs, emerging evidence pointed to the mouth as a potentially important site of infection. Symptoms like dry mouth, loss of taste and oral lesions became common clinical features, raising critical questions about how the virus might interact with oral tissues and whether saliva could serve as a route of transmission.

To better understand how the virus that causes COVID-19 affects the mouth, the researchers studied cells from human salivary glands and gum tissue. They examined over 13,000 individual cells from nine samples and grouped them into 50 different cell types. After careful analysis, they identified 34 distinct types of cells shared between the glands and gums.

They found that many of the the cells lining these areas, called epithelial cells, had high levels of proteins like ACE2 and TMPRSS, which are known to help the virus enter cells. Using additional testing methods, they confirmed that the virus can indeed infect cells in the salivary glands and the tissues of the mouth. They also found brand new cell types in the glands and gingiva that had long been suspected or described but with this new toolkit became evident, supporting future projects with their teams.These findings were compiled into the award winning research paper, titled “SARS-CoV-2 infection of the oral cavity and saliva”, and was published in March 2021. 

For his work on this project, Byrd received the prestigious World Perio Research Award. 

“It was an incredibly humbling and meaningful moment,” said Byrd. “To be selected by the editors of four of the leading journals in periodontology and dental research was a tremendous honor. This recognition reflects not just the importance of oral-systemic health but the momentum in our field to integrate oral biology into the broader biomedical conversation.”

The World Perio Research Award is given once every three years by Sunstar Foundation. The recipient is recognized for “outstanding research on the connection between periodontal disease and systemic health”, according to the foundation’s website.

“I’m deeply thankful to every trainee, colleague, and collaborator who contributed to this work,” Byrd said. “Science is a team sport, and none of these accomplishments happen in isolation. 

Byrd traveled to Vienna, Austria, in May 2025 for the ceremony. His work and accomplishments were recognized by experts from all over the world. 

“This award is a reflection of what’s possible when curiosity, persistence, and collaboration align,” Byrd said. “I hope it also inspires the next generation of oral health scientists to think big because the mouth is not separate from the body. It’s part of the airway, part of the immune system, and it belongs at the table in broader biomedical research.”

Byrd joined the Phillips Institute for Oral Health Research in December 2024 as a full-time faculty member. He came to VCU after a decade-long research career at the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill, and half a decade as a leader of research at the American Dental Association’s Science & Research Institute. Upon joining VCU School of Dentistry, Byrd founded the Digital Medicine Collaboratory, to focus multi-disciplinary efforts for biomedical AI and precision medicine initiatives at VCU with the School of Medicine, Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, and multiple industry partners  

The goal of the work is to create tools and methods that help scientists better understand how soft tissues fo the entire body work, both when they’re healthy and diseased. The research starts with the mouth and will expand to other important areas such as the lungs, skin and gut.

The team of researchers is at the forefront of using advanced technologies like artificial intelligence to study tissues in detail, develop new treatments and better understand cancer and fibrosis. They are building on this by focusing on a "human-first" approach by using real human tissues outside the body to test potential treatments, run large-scale experiments and integrate AI to make sense of the data.

“Our long-term objective is to take a systems biology approach to precision medicine: linking the right drug to the right patient at the right time,” said Byrd.

This strategy is now expanding into cancer through the VCU PROSPECTS Initiative (Pan-cancer Reconstruction Of Spatial Profiles and Therapeutic TargETs), where VCU researchers are applying these tools across ovarian, liver, breast, colorectal, lung, and head and neck cancers.

“By leveraging spatial biology and AI to map tumor-immune-stromal interactions in a tissue- and patient-specific context, we aim to uncover actionable therapeutic targets and reshape how we approach cancer diagnosis and treatment,” Byrd said. “Grounding this work in human biology from the outset is key to accelerating meaningful clinical translation and driving innovation across medicine.”