FOR OVERALL The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will leverage our research expertise in environmental epidemiology, analytical chemistry and clinical practice to renew our Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (HHEAR) Laboratory Network Hub (formerly known as ?CHEAR? in grant cycle 1). We will use a suite of `omic' technologies to measure environmental exposures and their response across all life stages to help NIH funded researchers determine how the environment affects human health, development and risk of disease across the life span. In the last 3 years we have expanded our laboratory resources to include liquid handlers to automate sample prep/aliquoting and worked with data scientist to automate data processing to speed the pace of our jobs. In addition we doubled the number of mass spectrometers from 7 to 14 and hired additional faculty all in preparation for this renewal application. We will leverage our substantial institutional investments, including our new $30 million Institute for Exposomics, to serve the HHEAR Lab network and its NIH researcher clients. Our Untargeted Resource will use molecular enviromics and metabolomics to measure exposure to environmental chemicals and their metabolites as well as the internal response to those exposures. We will supplement those measures with metallomics, proteomics and lipidomics. However, we are cognizant of the ever-changing landscape of health research and have included Microbiome and Viromics to prempt the NIH funded researchers' interest in including these measures to existing studies. We have state-of- the-art analytical methodologies and instrumentation that were made available to CHEAR users. While we will continue to offer these well-established methods to HHEAR clients, we are also committed to listening to the needs of HHEAR users and develop new biomarkers to meet those needs. Our Developmental core will build upon its highly successful work in creating novel methods to measure current and past chemical exposures in novel biological matrices (e.g. teeth, hair, placenta, neonatal dry blood spots) and develop new assays that arise from HHEAR's targeted and environmental resources. Our Administrative Core will coordinate planning and communication internally among all Hub components and externally with the HHEAR Coordinating Center, Data Center and the other HHEAR Network Hubs. Internally, the Administrative Core will streamline and prioritize HHEAR jobs, assess assay needs, promote and disseminate new assays as they are developed, harmonize protocols and QA/QC procedures and coordinate day-to-day operations. Our Hub will advise applicants on sample requirements, sample quality, results interpretation, sample collection, storage protocols and sample shipping specifications and guide them to the most innovative environmental health science.
The Mount Sinai Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (HHEAR) Laboratory Network Hub will advance public health in the United States by supporting state-of-the-art exposure science and biological response methods designed to discover the environmental causes of disease and disability in people of all ages.
