Register now: SRP Risk e-Learning webinar this Thursday, May 28, 2-4 pm ET

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.

Session III – Arsenic as a Case Study
Monday, June 8, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. EDT
Session III Registration

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.

Speakers:

·       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

Session IV – Moving Forward
Tuesday, June 16, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. EDT
Session IV Registration

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.