Mount Sinai CHEAR Network Laboratory Hub

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 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will leverage our research expertise in children's environmental health and the Frank Lautenberg Laboratory for Environmental Health Sciences to form a new Children's Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) Laboratory Network Hub. We will measure environmental exposures, both targeted and untargeted, across pregnancy and childhood to help NIH-funded researchers determine how the environment affects child health, development and risk of disease across the life span. Our team will develop new methodologies to objectively reconstruct past chemical exposures, allowing researchers to study susceptibility windows as they relate to child health. Four laboratory resources/cores will be established to achieve these goals; 1) a targeted analysis resource that will analyze common environmental 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; 2) an untargeted analysis resource using advanced technologies such as time-of- flight mass spectrometry to discover the chemicals, metabolites and other biomarkers that are associated with child health and disease; 3) a biological response indicators resource that will link environmental exposures to changes in immune function, epigenomic marks, gene expression, noncoding RNA and other response biomarkers; and 4) we will establish a developmental core that will create novel methods to measure current and past chemical exposures in new biological matrices (e.g. teeth, placenta), develop new assays to study emerging toxicants, and develop new methods to assess the body's response to exposure. An Administrative Core will be established to coordinate planning and communication externally with the CHEAR Coordinating Center, the CHEAR Data Center and the other CHEAR Network Laboratory Hubs. Internally, the Administration Core will integrate work among our Resources/Cores to streamline and prioritize job orders, assess assay needs, promote and disseminate new assays as they are developed, harmonize protocols and QA/QC procedures and coordinate day to day operations. This laboratory Hub will advise applicants on sample requirements, sample quality, results interpretation, sample collection, storage protocols and sample shipping specifications. Both analysis and interpretation of Lab Hub-generated data will be supported in cooperation with the Data Center; and 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 pediatricians, toxicologists, stress researchers, chemists, exposure scientists, epidemiologists, computer scientists, immunologists, and epigeneticists to build the infrastructure and capacity to objectively measure child environments.