Manuscripts that were published during this year are listed below and there are several that are either in preparation or submitted for publcaition. Some examples of collaborative research are given below: 1. Kadekar et al. (2012): Differences in cancer incidences between gender are often attributed to differences in exposures or influences of sex hormones. However, there are not many studies on gender differences in susceptibility to chemical carcinogens. Using the rich NTP database, in this paper we investigated sex differences in tumor responses in rats to various chemical carcinogens. Of the 278 carcinogenic chemicals in the NTP database, 201 (72%) exhibited gender differences (significant at 0.05 level of significance) in at least one non-reproductive organ. Of the 201 such cehmicals, 130 chemicals induced gender-specific tumors in male rats and 59 in female rats. 68 chemicals induced tumors in males but not in females and conversely, 19 chemicals induced tumors in females but not males. Male-specific tumors included pancreatic tumor and skin tumor, and female-specific tumors included lung tumors. 2. Joubert et a;. (2012): An object of this research is to examine the epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, caused by in utero exposures to maternal smoking. Maternal smoking is a major risk factor for multiple adverse health outcomes in children but the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. In this project we collected cord blood samples from newborns and investigated epigenome-wide methylation in relation to maternal smoking during pregnancy. We identified a several genes with methylation changes present at birth in children of mothers who smoked during pregnancy. This study is first of its kind to investigate the effect of maternal smoking during pregnancy on methylation across the genome using the 450K platform.
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