(Development Core) The primary objective of the Michigan Children?s Health Exposure Analysis Resource (M-CHEAR) Laboratory Hub is to contribute to large-scale national efforts to advance our knowledge of the impact of the environment on children?s health by offering high-quality, advanced laboratory support for a wide assortment of targeted and untargeted analyses in biological samples from external researchers conducting epidemiology and clinical studies of children?s health.
The Aims of the Developmental Core (DC) are to provide M-CHEAR investigators with novel analytical tools relevant to exposure assessment. These include developing novel technology platforms for comprehensive metabolomic analysis, identifying unknown metabolites, developing new methods for targeted metabolomics in a range of biological matrices, validating new biological response indicators and providing biological context to diverse metabolomic measurements through bioinformatics analysis and developing new bioinformatics tools. To this end, the DC will work closely with the Targeted Analysis (TAR), the Untargeted Analysis (UAR) and the Biological Response Resources (BRIR) and with M-CHEAR investigators to develop and implement new technologies to aid investigators in testing their research questions. Finally, utilizing a demonstration study, DC will be able to reach its goal of developing and optimizing new methods for exposure assessment in biological samples that would be of broad interest to the environmental and children?s health research community. To achieve these goals the DC will:. To achieve these goals the DC will: ? Develop new protocols for measurement of analytes for which there are no existing methods, analysis of new biological matrices and expand capabilities of the current platforms. ? Provide biological context to numerous and diverse biomarker measurements by data integration through cutting edge bioinformatics tools. ? Identification of unknown compounds discovered by the Untargeted Analysis Resource. ? Development of novel signatures of oxidative stress, dietary patterns and functional measures of biological response. ? Conduct a demonstration study as proof-of-principle to generate data from M-CHEAR Cores and utilize DC to develop novel analytical tools. ? Coordinate with other CHEAR Hubs, Steering Committee, Coordinating Center and the Data Repository, Analysis and Science Center to develop methods of high priority to CHEAR.
