Please contact Michelle Daoud at Lowdenm@umich.edu for items you would like
included in our M-LEEaD Newsletter
Transitions in M-LEEaD Leadership
As of August 1st, Dr. Rita Loch-Caruso has stepped down as M-LEEaD Center Director. Dr. Dana Dolinoy has become the new M-LEEaD Center Director with Dr. John Meeker taking the role as Center Deputy Director. We plan for continued success under our new leadership as it prepares for the next competing renewal application.
M-LEEaD would like to thank Dr. Loch-Caruso for her excellent leadership over the years. Under her leadership, the Center gave out 49 pilot project grants, supported 300 publications, invited over 100 speakers, and supported 9 Center Scientists. Here are some responses following the announcement of the leadership transition:
"Your leadership has been superb, and you are leaving the Center in excellent shape as Dana and John move into leadership positions to carry the Center to the next stage. Hope that the added time for your research is fruitful and fulfilling – you have certainly earned the opportunity to focus your energies in the coming months. Welcome Dana and John – looking forward to working with you in preparing the competitive renewal and beyond." – Dr. Amy Schulz
“Thank you! for your remarkable leadership of the center--your work will have a long lasting legacy and you are leaving the center in great hands! “ – Dr. Karen Peterson
The Omics & BioInformatics Core (OBIC) of M-LEEaD, in partnership with the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, coordinated a well-attended series of four seminars throughout the summer to highlight emerging research and innovative tools in various ‘omics fields. The Summer Omics Learning (SOL) Seminar Series featured lectures on transcriptomics, metabolomics, adductomics, and genomics by experts in their respective fields. In particular, speakers highlighted data analysis techniques which can be utilized to assess environmental exposures through ‘omics data. These lectures aimed to provide M-LEEaD members with insight and data driven tools in each field to facilitate increased utilization of ‘omics data in their research.
In May, Dr. Mario Medvedovic, Director of the Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at University of Cincinnati, lectured on “Learning mechanism of action from LINCS perturbation signatures.” The transcriptomic or proteomic signature of an environmental exposure can be identified through the pattern of expression levels of a gene or protein. Utilizing tools such as the iLINCS portal allows us to analyze specific signatures within pathways.
In June, Dr. Alla Karnovsky, Research Associate Professor of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan presented on “Analyzing Metabolomics Data: Current Tools and Future Challenges.” She described an innovative analysis method, combining Differential Network Enrichment Analysis method (DNEA) and Network-based Gene Set Analysis (NetGSA), to identify differentially enriched subnetworks within metabolomics data to understand how environmental exposures can affect health and lead to disease.
In July, the SOL series hosted two speakers. Dr. Robert Turesky, Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Masonic Chair in Cancer Causation at the University of Minnesota discussed “Strategies and approaches for human biomonitoring of environmental and dietary carcinogens.” His lab has established technologies to measure multiple classes of DNA adducts in formalin-fixed paraffin embedded tissues (FFPE) with clinical diagnosis of disease, to allow use of underutilized biospecimens which can be retrospectively screened.
To close the seminar series, Dr. Bhramar Mukherjee, John D. Kalbfleisch Collegiate Professor of Biostatistics, Chair of Biostatistics and Associate Director of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center presented a lecture on “The Michigan Genomics Initiative: An Integrated Data Frame to Enable Precision Health Queries.” Dr. Mukherjee (photo above) highlighted this rich institutional resource, which can be utilized for precision health research that is available to researchers at the University of Michigan. In particular, these data can be utilized to develop and evaluate polygenic risk scores across the phenome, through Phenome-wide Association Studies (PheWAS). Recordings of the July events can be found here, http://mleead.umich.edu/Multimedia.php.
Justin Colacino, PhD
Early Career Poster Presentation
At the 2019 NIEHS P30 center meeting in Iowa City, Iowa early career scientists had the opportunity to present their research. Only ten scientists were selected in total from over 20 centers following an abstract competition. Justin Colacino, Assistant Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Nutritional Sciences represented the M-LEEaD center. He presented a poster titled, “Chemical exposure differences in US women: Drivers of triple negative breast cancer disparities?”.
09/10/2019- 12pm-1pm - Room SPH1 3755, School of Public Health
Bruce Tonn, Ph.D. Professor of Urban and Regional Planning; Public Policy
Department of Political Science, The University of Tennessee
Co-Founder and President of Three3 (ThreeCubed)
"Health & Household-Related Benefits of Weatherizing Low-Income Homes & Affordable Multifamily Buildings"
Integrated Health Sciences Core Seminar Cosponsored by SEAS Contact Meredith McGehee, mcgehee@umich.edu, for more information
10/11/2019- 2pm-3pm - Room SPH1 3755, School of Public Health
Melissa Troester, PhD Professor, Department Of Epidemiology, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health
Research Professor, Department Of Pathology And Laboratory Medicine
The University of North Carolina
“The landscape of benign breast and breast cancer”
Admin Core Seminar Series
Contact Michelle Daoud, lowdenm@umich.edu, for more information
10/29/2019- 12pm-1pm - Room SPH1 3755, School of Public Health
Natalie Sampson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Public Health, College of Education, Health, and Human Services,
University of Michigan
Environmental Research/CBPR Seminar
Integrated Health Sciences Core and Community Engagment Seminar Contact Meredith McGehee, mcgehee@umich.edu, for more information
12/06/2019- 2pm-3pm - Room SPH1 3755, School of Public Health
Elaine Faustman, PhD Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences
Adjunct Professor of Public Policy & Governance
University of Washington TBD
Admin Core Seminar Series
Contact Michelle Daoud, lowdenm@umich.edu, for more information
"The Community of Food, Society & Justice Conference will engage students, faculty, staff, farmers, and the community in rigorous dialogue around these challenges. The conference will be structured around a foundation of interdisciplinary scholarship that agrees that recognizing structural relations of power are necessary in order to confront race, class, and gender privileges on issues such as food justice.
Our keynote speaker is investigative reporter, Tracie McMillan, traciemcmillan.com, author of The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table, and “The New Face of Hunger”, nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/hunger/"
This conference is free and open to all students, faculty, staff, and the public.
"Trish Koman, a former EPA scientist, who co-founded the agency's Clean Bus program, said schools can get creative to reduce idling, perhaps allowing drivers to go inside the building to stay cool or planting trees for shade."
Trish Koman was interviewed for an article by The Arizona Republic (USA Today Network) about children's environmental health. Read the story, "These high school runners train in 'nasty air,' so they're working to clean it up," here.
Recent Publications citing M-LEEaD:
Buxton MA, Meraz-Cruz N, Sanchez BN, Gronlund CJ, Foxman B, Vadillo-Ortega F, O'Neill MS. Air pollution and inflammation: Findings from concurrent repeated measures of systemic and reproductive tract cytokines during term pregnancy in Mexico City. Sci Total Environ. 2019 Sep 1;681:235-241. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.05.041. Epub 2019 May 5. PubMed PMID: 31103661; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6582973.
Ferguson KK, Rosario Z, McElrath TF, Vélez Vega C, Cordero JF, Alshawabkeh A, Meeker JD. Demographic risk factors for adverse birth outcomes in Puerto Rico in the PROTECT cohort. PLoS One. 2019;14(6):e0217770. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0217770. eCollection 2019. PubMed PMID: 31194765; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6564423.
Goodrich JM, Ingle ME, Domino SE, Treadwell MC, Dolinoy DC, Burant C, Meeker JD, Padmanabhan V. First trimester maternal exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals and metals and fetal size in the Michigan Mother-Infant Pairs study. J Dev Orig Health Dis. 2019 Aug;10(4):447-458. doi: 10.1017/S204017441800106X. Epub 2019 Jan 30. PubMed PMID: 30696509; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6660406.
Thong T, Forté CA, Hill EM, Colacino JA. Environmental exposures, stem cells, and cancer. Pharmacol Ther. 2019 Jul 31;:107398. doi: 10.1016/j.pharmthera.2019.107398. [Epub ahead of print] Review. PubMed PMID: 31376432; NIHMSID:NIHMS1537208.
Click here for a PDF with useful information about NIH Public Access Policy regarding citing the center grant.
Per NIH grants policy, all publications, press releases, and other documents relevant to research funded by the center must include a specific acknowledgement of support. For the EHS Core Center, this statement may read:
“Support for this research was provided by grant P30ES017885 from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.”
