Center for Comparative Biology of Vulnerable Populations

尽管对环境毒素的反应存在巨大的个体差异，但我们根本不明白为什么某些人在受到环境因子的挑战时会患病，而其他人则保持健康。虽然一个正在形成的共识表明，人类发展的许多复杂和流行的疾病是由于 生物学上独特的基因-基因和基因-环境相互作用，这种概念框架是有限的。 环境暴露会影响那些在时间（年龄）、空间（地理）和独特情况（共病、营养状况、经济状况、种族和遗传）上易受伤害的人。即使这种模式也未能解决最终导致疾病的内源性和外源性风险的复杂相互作用。虽然最近的 人类遗传学和分子遗传学的进步为我们提供了一个前所未有的机会，让我们了解基因如何与环境刺激相互作用，从而保持健康或引起疾病，如果不考虑个体微环境的时间、空间和其他独特组成部分，我们对环境健康的理解将仍然是不完整的。因此，我们建议的中心的主题是了解生物，生理和社会 脆弱性的各个方面改变了环境毒素对人类健康的影响。该中心的具体目标是： 1.开发和运营跨学科环境健康科学研究中心，重点了解脆弱性的生物、生理和社会方面如何改变环境毒素对人类健康的影响; 2.通过促进环境健康现有跨学科项目之间的研究互动，促进环境健康新研究地点的发展，以及建立支持和扩展环境健康研究的基础设施，加强杜克大学环境健康研究; 3.确定新的和创造性的政策方法，将联合收割机对环境健康科学的先进理解与政策应用的现实相结合; 4.作为该地区、国家和国际机构在环境卫生领域的技术和教育资源。

Despite the tremendous inter-individual variability in the response to environmental toxins, we simply do not understand why certain people develop disease when challenged with environmental agents and others remain healthy. Although an emerging consensus suggests that many of the complex and prevalent diseases that humans develop occur as a result of multiple biologically unique gene-gene and gene-environment interactions, this conceptual framework is limited. Environmental exposures affect those that are vulnerable temporally (age), spatially (geographically), and by unique circumstance (co-morbid disease, nutritional status, economic status, race, and genetics). Even this paradigm fails to address the complex interaction of endogenous and exogenous risks that ultimately cause disease. While the recent advances in human and molecular genetics provide an unparalleled opportunity to understand how genes interact with environmental stimuli to either preserve health or cause disease, without accounting for the temporal, spatial, and other unique components of an individual's microenvironment, our understanding of environmental health will remain incomplete. Thus, the theme of our proposed Center is to understand how biological, physiological, and social aspects of vulnerability alter the effect of environmental toxins on human health. Specific goals of the Center are: 1. To develop and operate an interdisciplinary environmental health sciences research center with a focus on understanding how biological, physiological, and social aspects of vulnerability alter the effect of environmental toxins on human health; 2. To enhance research in environmental health at Duke by promoting research interactions between existing interdisciplinary programs in environmental health, fostering the development of new research loci in environmental health, and establishing an infrastructure to support and extend research in environmental health; 3. To identify new and creative policy approaches that combine advanced understanding of environmental health sciences with the reality of policy application; and 4. To serve as a technical and educational resource to the region, the nation, and to international agencies in the area of environmental health.