ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SCIENCES RESEARCH CENTER
A National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center of Excellence

Director:
Co-Directors:

Joel N. Kline, M.D.
Eric A. Hoffman, M.D.
Geoffrey McLennan, M.D.

Specific Aims

Aim 1)  Provide the infrastructure to carry out clinical and translational studies relevant to environmental health science.

• Recruit human subjects for clinical and translational studies relevant to environmental health science.
• Provide resources to assist in obtaining IRB approval for relevant clinical and translational studies.
• Carry out acute human exposures to dry aerosols, gases, nebulized solutions, and combined exposures under rigidly controlled conditions that are safe for both research subjects and research personnel; rigorously control, monitor, and quantify exposures and environmental conditions throughout the studies.
• Assess and monitor pulmonary and systemic physiologic responses.
• Obtain and process biologic samples.
• Assess and quantify radiographic manifestations of airway injury and response.
• Develop and maintain a registry and tissue bank of asthma patients and their environmental exposures to support gene-environment studies.
• Develop and maintain a registry and tissue bank of all individuals who undergo bronchoscopy at the University of Iowa.

Aim 2)  Ensure that clinical and translational studies relevant to environmental health science are carried out safely and that subject confidentially is maintained.

Aim 3)  Provide the infrastructure for training of young clinical/translational investigators with an interest in environmental health science.

Through these aims, the Integrative Health Sciences Facility serves to encourage translational research, facilitating interdisciplinary collaborations between basic and clinical investigators.  By supporting the planning and conduct of such studies, the Facility makes it possible for investigators without clinical training or expertise to ask and answer questions that are most relevant to the effects of the environment on human health and disease.