The vision for the U2C National Exposure Assessment Laboratory at Emory (NEALE) is to provide the children's health research community with access to state-of-the-art analysis of environmental factors related to health and disease. In addition to providing data, the NEALE will provide context for the results including detailed methodology, sample processing, data analysis flow, rigorous quality control/assurance and assistance with interpretation. Building upon infrastructure established as part of the exposome-based NIEHS P30, the Emory team is ideally suited to pursue the type of research described in the U2C RFA. The overarching goal of the NEAL at Emory is to provide comprehensive and reproducible data on environmental exposures and the corresponding biological responses for the children's health research community. The NEAL at Emory will achieve its goal by pursuing the following objectives: Objective 1. Help articulate and promote the vision of the early-life exposome to the children's health research community. Objective 2. Conduct targeted analysis on samples provided from children's health studies. Emory has extensive experience with performing targeted analysis of chemicals in large human studies (GC/MS, GC-MS/MS, HPLC/MS, HPLC/MS/MS, ICP-MS, and FT- HRMS). Objective 3. Conduct untargeted analysis on samples provided from children's health studies using a high-resolution metabolomics platform. Emory has been at the forefront of method development with Fourier transform-high resolution mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. Objective 4. Analyze samples from children's health studies using a suite of up- to-date assays designed to measure the biological responses to external influences that impact children's health. Objective 5. Develop and integrate novel approaches into the NEAL at Emory. The Developmental Research Resource will promote the development of novel approaches for the measurement of environmental mediators of children's health. This will include, but not be limited to, development of new methodologies for sample collection, development of targeted methods for newly emerging environmental chemicals, adoption of existing techniques to measurement of biological response, and integration and consolidation of existing platforms to reduce costs and increase throughput. Objective 6. Serve as a conduit for the receipt of samples from the CHEAR Coordinating Center and the transfer of data to the CHEAR Data Core.
The National Exposure Assessment Laboratory at Emory is designed to support children's health research as it relates to environmental exposures. Expert services in mass spectrometry for targeted and untargeted analysis, as well as measures of biological responses will be provided to investigators under the direction of the CHEAR Coordinating Center.
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