Trang VoPham will investigate how patterns in the timing of daily light exposure affect health.
Four novel projects receive $40 K each from the EDGE Center pilot project program.
This year three projects will receive $40 K from the pilot projects program of the University of Washington Interdisciplinary Center for Exposures, Diseases, Genomics & Environment (EDGE). Each of these projects employs a new and innovative approach to environmental health research that advances the priorities of the EDGE Center and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), by, for example, developing markers that help measure environmental exposures, early biological response, and/or genetic susceptibility.
An additional priority for NIEHS is to “improve and expand community-linked research.” In support of this priority, EDGE awards an additional $10 K to projects that include community engagement among their primary aims. Along with additional funding comes staff support from the EDGE community engagement core.
A summary of each 2021 pilot project can be found below.
Community Engagement to Identify Priorities, Policies, and Scenarios for Modeling the Health Benefits of a Just Transition
Jeremy Hess, Andrew Dannenberg, Kris Ebi, Julian Marshall, and Esther Min
Washington State’s commitment to achieving net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 provides an opportunity to improve health equity for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Indeed, Washington is committed to including environmental justice in its decarbonization process, but the effort is expected to take many years. Jeremy Hess, Andrew Dannenbery, Kris Ebi, Julian Marshall, and Esther Min will work with Front & Centered, a coalition of BIPOC-led environmental justice organizations, to accelerate the state’s approach. They will create three decarbonization scenarios with different levels of priority placed on health equity. These scenarios will feed into a health impact assessment that will project air pollution health impacts through 2050. Over the course of the one-year pilot grant, the team will address two aims. First, it will identify Front and Centered members’ priorities for Washington’s decarbonization process. Second, it will translate community inputs into scenarios that can be used to highlight the equity implications of decarbonization to help rapidly incorporate environmental justice into policy.
Unraveling Gut Microbiome-Mediated Alterations in Human CYP3A4 Expression and Activity
Qingcheng Mao, Julia Cui, and Yvonne Lin
While the last decade has seen an exponential rise in the number of studies linking the gut microbiome to physiology and disease, there have been few studies of how the microbiome influences drug function by modulating the expression of drug-metabolizing enzymes. In this pilot study, Qingcheng Mao, Julia Cui, and Yvonne Lin will address this critical knowledge gap by examining how the gut microbiome alters the expression and activity of an enzyme known as human CYP3A4. Human CYP3A4 is considered the most important cytochrome P450 enzyme (a category of enzymes that metabolize drugs into less toxic forms). Mao, Cui, and Lin have evidence from experiments with mice suggesting that the gut microbiome can alter the expression of CYP3A4, but it’s not clear whether the same happens in humans. In the current pilot study, Cui and Lin will create a novel germ-free humanized mouse and examine the expression and activity of human CYP3A4 in their liver and small intestine. Their results will have important implications for understanding interactions between food, drugs, and environmental chemicals.
Spatiotemporal Refinement for Environmental Circadian Misalignment
Trang VoPham
Circadian misalignment occurs when a person’s waking, sleeping, and eating become out of sync with their biological clock. This is common during shift work or temporary jetlag due to travel, and when continued over the long-term, is associated with many adverse health outcomes. Environmental circadian misalignment, or solar jetlag, is a specific type of circadian misalignment caused by mis-timing of light exposure. People who experience solar jetlag, such as people who live in the western region of a time zone, face a higher risk of diseases such as cancer. In this pilot study, Trang VoPham and colleagues developed a novel geospatial solar jetlag exposure measure (www.fredhutch.org/lightmodel) that can be used to explore the relationship between solar jetlag and health outcomes. Her previous work suggested that solar jetlag increases risk for hepatocellular carcinoma, a type of liver cancer, but this study used a lower resolution solar jetlag exposure measure. The new solar jetlag exposure measure incorporates high-resolution data on time zone location, sunrise time, sunset time, and elevation. Precisely capturing geographic variation in solar jetlag in this way will have important population-level implications as light exposure is the most important driver in setting circadian rhythms.