Modeling Environmental Exposures & Disease

MODELING ENVIRONMENTAL EXPOSURES AND DISEASE FACILITY CORE - ABSTRACT The Modeling Environmental Exposures and Disease Facility Core (MEED) provides systems modeling as well as data science methods and computational tools that support and complement field and laboratory studies conducted by CEED investigators. These methods and tools help to elucidate how environmental exposures can lead to disease, and to translate these findings to prevention and mitigation strategies that reduce adverse health outcomes. MEED supports a wide range of computational approaches, applicable across multiple environmental and biological scales, for assessing and modeling events and processes that occur along the continuum from source of environmental stressors to human exposures and to target tissue doses and biological responses. In particular, the Core Co-Directors, Hao Zhu and Panos Georgopoulos have been developing and applying novel “hybrid” computational frameworks that combine mechanism-driven systems simulations with data-driven interpretable machine learning methods for predictive toxicology and exposure science applications. MEED provides support to CEED investigators in quantifying environmental exposures and biological processes associated with xenobiotics at the systems level, accounting for different system components, interactions, and functional states. To achieve its goals, MEED has three aims: Aim 1. Provide state-of-the-art data science (informatics) tools for the analysis and integration of complex heterogeneous socioeconomic, environmental, chemical, and biological data relevant to environmental health; Aim 2. Develop/adapt mechanistic models for environmental and biological processes to support spatiotemporal estimation of exposures and simulate internal doses and processes linking exposures to disease pathogenesis; and Aim 3. Work with community partners and the Community Engagement Core (CEC) to identify and model exposures and risks of concern at the community or individual levels as a function of geography, lifestyle/behavior, socioeconomic conditions, and host factors. The core models and translates exposures and health outcomes associated with intervention strategies developed through our community partnerships. Examples of projects supported by MEED that will be expanded in scope during the next grant period include: (a) Modeling global-to-local impacts on environmental stressor exposures; (b) Modeling complex toxic exposures; applications involve PFAS mixtures, air toxics, mycoestrogens, and others; (c) Modeling multiscale pulmonary and multi-organ toxicodynamic responses to inhalation of oxidative stress agents such as ozone and nanoparticles; and (d) High-throughput toxicity and risk screening methods for chemicals and nanomaterials.