In the past decade four such schools have opened in the United States using this model which educates the dental student in the basic sciences with either part-time faculty brought in at specific times, or with the faculty of affiliated schools of osteopathy, followed by clinical B-Raf inhibition training in a variety of satellite clinics [2]. While such a model has shown to be an effective educational system for training clinicians, these new educationally focused schools generally

have minimal to no basic or translational research activities. This changing demographic in the need for new dental schools in the United States contrasts to the current trend in Japan where there is a perception over the past decade of an oversupply of dentists, and pressures from the Japan Dental Association to decrease their student enrollments. In the United States from 1986 to 2001, there were indeed both cuts in enrollments and closure of dental schools with the perception of an oversupply of dentists BKM120 solubility dmso [2]. However, with the continued growth and aging of the population in the United States, the need for new dentists

has increased. Whether this increase in the rate of newly trained dentists in the United States can meet the dental needs in underserved populations outside of cities and suburban areas, is still open to question. In Japan by contrast, in 2006, the Minister of Education and the Minister of Health agreed to make serious efforts to decrease the number of dentists by cutting back on dental student intake and by making the National Dental Examination (which started in 1947) more difficult. TMDU is no exception. TMDU is requested to decrease its annual intake of students from 65 to 53. By contrast in the past 5 years, UCSF has increased

its enrollment for its 4-year DDS program from 80 to 88 students per year and has also instituted a 2-year DDS program for internationally trained dentists with 24 students per class. Similar increases in enrollments have been instituted in other US dental schools [2]. It also should be noted that in the United States, the American Dental Association, with the authority of the US Department of Education, officially gives accreditation HSP90 status to such a wide range of dental education programs, based on compliance to a set of standards with flexibility given as to how these standards are met. This is in contrast to the more central government directives from the Japan Monbukagakusho on necessary curriculum requirements, enrollment targets for both public and private dental schools, and examination requirements [3]. For example, the National Dental Examination is now a major tool to adjust (decrease) the number of newly licensed dentists. These efforts to decrease the number of dentists by the knowledge-only national examination affects Japanese undergraduate dental education.