Mount Sinai HHEAR Network Targeted Lab Hub

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Overall PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will leverage our research expertise in environmental epidemiology, analytical chemistry and clinical practice to renew our Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (HHEAR) Laboratory Network Hub (formerly known as “CHEAR” in grant cycle 1). We will measure targeted chemical exposures across all life stages to help NIH funded researchers determine how the environment affects human health, development and risk of disease across the life span. In the last 3 years we have expanded our laboratory resources to include liquid handlers to automate sample prep/aliquoting and worked with data scientist to automate data processing to speed the pace of our jobs. In addition we doubled the number of mass spectrometers from 7 to 14 and hired additional faculty all in preparation for this renewal application. We will leverage our substantial institutional investments, including our new 30 million dollar Institute for Exposomics, to serve the HHEAR Lab network and its NIH researcher clients. Our targeted resource will analyze common exposure biomarkers (metals, pesticides, flame retardants, endocrine disrupting chemicals, tobacco metabolites, vitamins, nutritional status, minerals, and other organic compounds) using state-of-the-art analytical methodologies, while developing new biomarkers of chemical exposure based on the needs of our NIH clients. We will further build upon our work in CHEAR in which we created a suite of customizable panels that facilitate research in complex chemical mixtures. Our Developmental core will build upon its highly successful work in creating novel methods to measure current and past chemical exposures in novel biological matrices (e.g. teeth, hair, dried blood spots, placenta) and develop new assays that arise from hits from HHEAR's untargeted and environmental resources. This team already developed methods to objectively reconstruct past chemical exposures and identify susceptibility windows as they relate to human health in CHEAR. Our Administrative Core will coordinate planning and communication internally among all Hub components and externally with the HHEAR Coordinating Center, Data Center and the other HHEAR Network Hubs. Internally, the Administrative Core will streamline and prioritize HHEAR jobs, assess assay needs, promote and disseminate new assays as they are developed, harmonize protocols and QA/QC procedures and coordinate day to day operations. Our Hub will advise applicants on sample requirements, sample quality, results interpretation, sample collection, storage protocols and sample shipping specifications guiding them to exposures that fit the most up to date and innovative environmental health science. If necessary we will outreach to outside laboratories with analytic capabilities/expertise that do not reside in our Lab Hub. In conclusion, this proposal links highly experienced environmental health scientists with physicians, toxicologists, stress researchers, chemists, exposure scientists, epidemiologists, and computer scientists to build the infrastructure and capacity to objectively measure human environments.