Registration is
filling up fast for the second session of our NIEHS Superfund
Research Program (SRP) Risk e-Learning webinar series, Exposures and
Latent Disease Risk, this Thursday, May 28 from
2:00-4:00 pm EDT. In the second session, presenters will discuss new methods
to understand potential disease risk by identifying hallmarks or key
characteristics associated with disease. These methods may provide a way to
link exposures to disease earlier in the disease's progression.
We are currently at about 90% registration capacity so we
encourage you to register ASAP if you would like to attend the live webinar. If
registration fills up, you will be placed on a wait list and will receive the
full archived recording of the webinar next week. That way, you can still
listen to the full recording at your convenience after it is presented on
Thursday.
The webinars are free and open to the public. Registration
is open for the remaining three sessions (links below).
If you were unable to join the first session, Linking
Exposures to Diseases with Long Latency Periods, an archive is now available on
the
CLU-IN webinar page.
Session II - Identifying Hallmarks and Key Characteristics
Thursday, May 28, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. EDT
Session II Registration
Speakers:
· Martyn Smith,
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley SRP Center
· Michele La
Merrill, Ph.D., University of California, Davis
· Ron Kohanski,
Ph.D., National Institute on Aging
· Moderator: Heather
Henry, Ph.D., NIEHS Superfund Research Program
Martyn Smith,
Ph.D., director of the University of California, Berkeley SRP Center,
will describe the key characteristics approach to helping identify chemicals
that cause cancer and other adverse outcomes. In evaluating whether a chemical
can cause cancer or another adverse outcome, three lines of evidence are typically
considered: epidemiology, animal bioassays, and mechanistic evidence. The key
characteristics (KC) form the basis of a uniform approach for searching,
organizing, and evaluating mechanistic evidence to support hazard
identification without the need for a deductive hypothesis. KCs are the
established properties of the chemicals and have been developed for
carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, reproductive and neuro-toxicants, and are
becoming increasingly used by authoritative bodies and regulatory agencies.
Michelle La
Merrill, Ph.D., associate professor at the University of California,
Davis, will focus on using the key characteristics of endocrine disruptors to
organize mechanistic support of the developmental basis of endocrine
disruption. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are exogenous chemicals that
interfere with hormone action, thereby increasing health risks, such as for
cancer, reproductive impairment, cognitive deficits, and obesity. Inspired by
work to improve hazard identification of carcinogens using KCs, they have
developed 10 KCs of EDCs based on our knowledge of hormone actions and EDC
effects. This presentation will reveal how these 10 KCs can be used to
identify, organize and utilize mechanistic data when evaluating chemicals as
EDCs that contribute to developmental vulnerability to adult disease, and use
DDT and bisphenol A as examples to illustrate this approach.
Ron Kohanski,
Ph.D., deputy director of the Division of Aging Biology at the
National Institute on Aging, will focus on aging as a risk factor for disease.
Geroscience is a recently evolved field of research on the intersection between
the biology of aging and the biology of disease. The geroscience hypothesis
states that “slowing the rate of aging will delay the onset and decrease the
severity of chronic diseases and comorbidities that primarily impact older
people.” This does not mean that old age per se is a risk factor, any more than
claiming that childhood is a risk factor for diseases that primarily afflict
children. However, in the latter case the underlying causes may be the stage of
development does not yet confer resilience against pathogens, for example. In
the former case, the underlying causes may be loss of that resilience (acquired
over a lifetime) from the failure of underlying molecular networks that
maintain the body and adapt to environmental changes. This talk will present a
viewpoint that aging can be treated as a risk factor, attempting to show that
both the magnitude and duration of changes that are the process of aging can be
altered in ways that are either beneficial or detrimental to health.
In the third session, presenters will describe
studies linking early-life arsenic exposure and later-life disease risk. The
focus on arsenic as a case study may also provide insights into linking other
exposures to latent disease risk and identifying windows of susceptibility.
· Yu Chen,
Ph.D., New York University, Columbia University SRP Center
· Maria Argos,
Ph.D., University of Chicago, Columbia University SRP Center
· Fenna Sillé,
Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University
· Erik Tokar,
Ph.D., National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
· Moderator: Brittany
Trottier, NIEHS Superfund Research Program
In the fourth and final session, presenters will
discuss emerging toxicology and modeling methods, as well as needs, to better
link exposure to latent disease risk.
Speakers:
· Stefano Monti,
Ph.D., Boston University SRP Center
· Manish Arora,
Ph.D., Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
· Stephen Ferguson,
Ph.D., National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
· Moderator: Michelle Heacock,
Ph.D., NIEHS Superfund Research Program
We encourage you to invite
your colleagues, and we hope you can make it! More information and links to
register are now available on the SRP Risk e-Learning website.
