Molecular Analysis and Statistical Support Facility Core (MASS)

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ABSTRACT The Molecular Analysis and Statistical Support (MASS) core supports the theme of the UNC Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility (CEHS), translating interdisciplinary research on environmental health susceptibility to improve public health in North Carolina. The MASS will provide comprehensive, user-friendly, and efficient support for data acquisition, analysis, and interpretation needs of laboratory, clinical, and population-based investigations in environmental health. The MASS will provide access and facilitate utilization of a range of molecular cores and will integrate this support with rigorous and state-of-the-art biostatistics and bioinformatics assistance in study design, data acquisition, and data analysis to support translational research in the areas of Environmental Cancer, Cardiopulmonary Disease, and Developmental Disease (Aim 1). The MASS will develop and implement new molecular and statistical methods to meet investigators' analytic needs and to adapt to emerging data analysis strategies and unique data problems (Aim 2). The MASS will provide technical training, ranging from molecular methods to statistical, bioinformatics, and data science, for junior investigators through seminars, workshops, and symposia tailored to the needs of CEHS researchers (Aim 3). We collaborate with campus-wide efforts in genomics, exposure science, data science and computational medicine to expand the influence and expertise of CEHS investigators and junior investigators. Finally, the MASS subcores function collaboratively with the Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core (IHSFC) to support existing research, novel pilot projects, community engagement, and grant applications (Aim 4). Major program efforts and accomplishments during the past grant cycle include: updated infrastructure and instrumentation to enable CEHS investigators to access state-of-the-art analytical and molecular technologies; a new Method Development Award Program to support developing innovative new exposure science and molecular methods for CEHS investigators; and novel state-of-the-art data analysis pipelines for CEHS members. Faculty with expertise in molecular and quantitative methods development are available and serve as collaborators on pilot projects and external grants. Our MASS facility core provides a scalable, high quality, full service core facility to address data acquisition and analytic needs of our membership, from inception to implementation.