Exposure Biology

Program Description

Recent increases in chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma, obesity, and autism are thought to arise from the combined effects of both genes and environmental exposures. Understanding the contribution of environmental factors to disease susceptibility will require a more comprehensive view of exposure and biological response than what has traditionally been applied. Achieving this goal will require the establishment of new capabilities in assessing exposure on an individual scale and the identification of biomarkers of response to those exposures. The Exposure Biology Program will, therefore, initially focus on developing new technologies and assays that will provide the improved accuracy and precision needed to determine how environmental exposures contribute to human disease or dysfunction.

The Exposure Biology Program of the NIH Genes, Environment and Health Initiative (GEI) (http://www.gei.nih.gov/index.asp) , led by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), invests in innovative new technologies to determine how environmental exposures, including diet, physical activity, stress and drug use, contribute to human disease. This includes sensors for chemicals in the environment, new ways to characterize dietary intake, levels of physical activity, responses to psychosocial stress, and measures of the biological response to these factors at the physiological and molecular levels. These new tests will provide the improved accuracy and precision needed to determine how environmental and lifestyle factors interact with genetic factors to determine the risk of developing disease.

In a parallel effort to the GEI, the NIEHS has invested a portion of Small Business Innovative Research Program (SBIR) (http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/programs/sbir/index.cfm) funds to develop sensors for improved exposure assessment. It is anticipated that the resulting new technologies and assays, such as those based on micro- and nanotechnology and molecular imaging, will provide sensitive, high throughput, and potentially portable systems capable of measuring environmental exposures in real-time.

Program Contacts

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