NIEHS Awards Discover Grants
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS),
part of the National Institutes of Health, is awarding a total
of $6.8 million for the first year of funding to three new research
centers called DISCOVER — Disease Investigation Through Specialized
Clinically-Oriented Ventures in Environmental Research. The
new DISCOVER centers are expected to bridge the gap between basic
research and clinical treatment of diseases caused by environmental
factors.
"The DISCOVER centers will help to define the role of environmental
agents in the initiation and progression of human disease and develop
new ways to both prevent and treat disease," said Dennis
Lang, Ph.D., interim director, NIEHS Division of Extramural Research
and Training, as he announced the new awards. "The
potential impact of the research that these three centers will
be conducting is enormous."
The NIEHS launched the DISCOVER program in January 2006 when the
initial grant opportunities were announced. The centers reflect
an integrated research approach expected to advance our understanding
of how the environment interacts with biological processes to either
preserve health or cause disease by bringing together laboratory
research and population based studies.
"The research being supported through this program
is unique in that each DISCOVER center will support projects that
will be patient-or clinically oriented, while also looking at the
mechanisms of how certain environmental factors influence disease
etiology, pathogenesis, susceptibility, progression, and prognosis," said
David Balshaw, Ph.D., one of the scientists at NIEHS who helped
develop the program.
Balshaw points out that the new centers reflect the commitment
of NIEHS to children's health research. "Two of the
DISCOVER centers are direct extensions of previously funded Centers
for Children's Environmental Health. The DISCOVER centers
will focus their efforts on understanding the clinical impact of
environmental exposures in children and extending that research
to improve diagnosis and clinical intervention. We believe
this work will also inform public policy and community education
aimed at reducing the burden of children's asthma," Balshaw
said.
The three new centers are:
- Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore; Patrick
N. Breysse, Ph. D. Breysse and his collaborators
will form a new DISCOVER Center called the Center for Childhood
Asthma in the Urban Environment. This group will examine how
indoor and outdoor exposures to particulate matter and allergens
may impact the airways of asthmatic children. African-American
children living in inner cities often are disproportionately
impacted by asthma because of excessive indoor and outdoor pollutants. The
researchers will be working closely with the family members and
others in the community as they conduct this research.
- Columbia
University School of Public Health, New York; Frederica Perera,
Dr. PH. Perera and her collaborators will focus
their research efforts on when and how common air pollutants
from traffic and other combustion sources including diesel exhaust
can affect the lungs of children. The Columbia
Center for Children's Environmental Health DISCOVER grant
proposes to develop community partnerships and outreach to regulatory
policy for improved disease prevention as well as develop biomarkers
of exposure and disease progression and improved therapies for
children's asthma based on understanding environmental
exposures.
- University
of Washington, Seattle; Joel Kaufman, M.D., MPH. Kaufman
and colleagues will focus their research efforts on understanding
the impact of traffic-related air pollution on cardiovascular
disease. Specifically, the program will seek to increase understanding
of biological pathways related to inflammation and vascular dysfunction
from air pollutants and progression of cardiovascular disease. The
ultimate translation of this program will potentially advance
therapy and cardiovascular disease prevention through educational
outreach opportunities to both the medical and public health
communities.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS),
a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), supports
research to understand the effects of the environment on human
health. For more information on environmental health topics,
please visit our website at http://www.niehs.nih.gov/.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's
Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and
Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting
and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research,
and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both
common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and
its programs, visit www.nih.gov. |