Project 3: Placental Biomarkers of Exposure and Outcome (Marsit)

有强有力的证据表明，在子宫内经历的环境有助于儿童和成年期间的心血管、代谢、免疫和神经系统健康。确定生命早期有风险的儿童对于改善健康结果至关重要；暴露和结果的生物标志物是用于风险识别的有力工具，并提供了告知疾病发育起源所涉及的机制的机会。来自我们自己的实验室和其他实验室的新证据表明，胎盘作为宫内环境和胎儿发育的主要调节器，在健康和疾病的发育起源中起着关键作用。因此，胎盘是鉴定介导胎儿健康编程的功能性生物标志物的理想组织。在已发表的和初步的研究中，我们已经证明，砷等暴露可以改变人类胎盘组织中DNA甲基化和基因表达的模式，并且我们已经证明，这种改变与胎儿生长和新生儿神经行为测量有关。我们的目标是发展创新

There is strong evidence that the environment experienced in utero contributes to cardiovascular, metabolic, immunologic, and nervous system health during both childhood and adulthood. Defining children at-risk early in life is critical to improving health outcomes; biomarkers of exposure and outcome are powerful tools to use in risk identification and offer an opportunity to inform the mechanisms involved in the developmental origins of disease. Emerging evidence, from our own laboratories and others, suggests that the placenta, as a master regulator of the intrauterine environment and of fetal development, plays a critical role in the developmental origins of health and disease. Thus, the placenta is an ideal tissue in which to identify functional biomarkers that mediate fetal programming of health. In published and preliminary studies we have demonstrated that exposures, such as arsenic, can alter the patterns of DNA methylation and of gene expression in primary human placental tissue, and we have demonstrated that such alterations are associated with fetal growth and newborn neurobehavioral measures. We aim here to develop novel biomarkers of exposure and outcome by examining the hypothesis that environmental exposures encountered by a pregnant woman impact the epigenetic and gene expression profiles of the infant's placenta and these functional alterations are associated with poor-health outcomes in the children. We will employ the existing resources of the ongoing New Hampshire Birth Cohort Study, and its established biorepository of placental tissues, to allow sensitive and robust assessment of gene expression and genomewide DNA methylation in combination with infant and maternal biomarkers of arsenic exposure. We propose to use state-of-the-art genomic technologies to identify and validate novel profiles of DNA methylation and gene expression susceptible to environmental exposure in human placenta and to examine their association with newborn outcomes including growth, infection and neurodevelopment being assessed in Projects 1 and 2 of the Program. These examinations will provide critical insight into the mechanisms of the developmental origins of lifelong health, highlight novel pathways affected by exposures that drive children's health, and identify novel biomarkers which can be used to find at the earliest points of life, children at-risk so necessary interventions can be employed soon enough to prevent future disease.