Tavares Lab

Harim Tavares dos Santos, DDS, MS, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Oral Biology. His research focuses on head and neck diseases, with an emphasis on salivary gland disorders and the mechanisms that drive persistent gland dysfunction. A central theme of his work is defining how tuft cells—specialized chemosensory epithelial cells—shape salivary gland homeostasis by coordinating innate and adaptive immune responses.

In professional leadership, he served as Co-Chair of the Gordon Research Seminar on Salivary Gland and Exocrine Biology (2023), as a member of the International Association for Dental Research Constitution Committee (2022–2025), and as Group Program Chair of the IADR Salivary Research Group (2023–2025). He currently serves as Vice President of the IADR Salivary Research Group (2026).

Finally, his research has been supported by the Sjögren’s Foundation (High Impact Grant) and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research/National Institutes of Health (K99/R00).

Research in the Tavares Lab focuses on inflammatory mechanisms that drive salivary gland dysfunction in head and neck disease. We aim to define how salivary epithelial cells—particularly tuft cells—sense inflammatory cues and coordinate innate and adaptive immune programs that shape gland homeostasis and saliva production.

It is our long-term goal to map the epithelial–immune circuits that maintain immune balance in the gland and to determine why these circuits collapse into chronic inflammation and persistent hypofunction, including in Sjögren’s disease. We integrate mechanistic mouse models with human salivary gland specimens and multi-omic approaches, including spatial transcriptomics, quantitative histology and saliva proteomics.

• Michael Rusiniak, PhD, research scientist
• Lara Shimagami, undergraduate volunteer

• Tuft cell regulation of salivary gland inflammation.

Location: 621 Biomedical Research Building
Laboratory Phone: 716-829-2854
Email: harimtav@buffalo.edu