Category: US Department of Health

Source: US Department of Health and Human Services – 2

Source: US Department of Health and Human Services – 2

News Release

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

New research consortium will develop innovative strategies for clinical studies involving ancestrally diverse populations.

The National Institutes of Health is establishing the Multi-Omics for Health and Disease Consortium, with approximately $11 million awarded in the consortium’s first year of funding. The new consortium aims to advance the generation and analysis of “multi-omic” data for human health research.

Multi-omics refers to a research approach that incorporates several “omics” data types derived from different research areas — such as genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics. Each of these data types reveals distinct information about different aspects of a biological system, and leveraging all these data types at once is becoming increasingly possible with advances in high-throughput technologies and data science. 

The integration of multiple types of data from an individual participant’s biological sample can provide a more holistic view of the molecular factors and cellular processes involved in human health and disease, including untangling genetic and non-genetic factors in health and disease. Such an approach offers great promise in areas such as defining disease subtypes, identifying biomarkers and discovering drug targets.

“Beyond gaining insights into individual diseases, the primary goal of this consortium is to develop scalable and generalizable multi-omics research strategies as well as methods to analyze these large and complex datasets,” said Joannella Morales, Ph.D., a National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) program director involved in leading the consortium. “We expect these strategies will ultimately be adopted by other research groups, ensuring the consortium’s work will have broad and long-lasting impacts for clinical research.”

Approximately half of the awarded funds will support the work of six disease study sites, which will examine conditions such as fatty liver diseases, hepatocellular carcinoma, asthma, chronic kidney disease and preeclampsia, among others. The sites will enroll research participants, at least 75% of whom will be from ancestral backgrounds underrepresented in genomics research. The sites will also collect data on participants’ environments and social determinants of health to be used in conjunction with the multi-omics data. Combining the multi-omic and environmental data can offer an even more comprehensive view of the factors that contribute to disease risk and outcomes.

Specimens provided by participants will be processed at the omics production center, which will use high-throughput molecular assays to generate genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data that will be analyzed to generate molecular profiles of disease and non-disease states. The data analysis and coordination center will then incorporate all of these data into large, organized datasets that will be made available to the scientific community for further studies.

“Multi-omics studies are at the forefront of biomedical research and promise to advance our understanding of disease onset and progression,” said Erin Ramos, Ph.D., M.P.H., deputy director of NHGRI’s Division of Genomic Medicine. “All while potentially providing important clues for treatment design and drug-discovery efforts. This new consortium is an important step in making those advances a reality.”

Approximately $50.3 million will be awarded to the consortium over five years, pending the availability of funds. The award is funded jointly by NHGRI, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

Multi-Omics for Health and Disease Consortium

Disease study sites and principal investigators

• Louise Laurent, M.D., Ph.D., University of California, San Diego
• Krzysztof Kiryluk, M.D., Columbia University — New York City
• Stephanie Christenson, M.D., University of California, San Francisco — co-funded with NIEHS
• Vaia Lida Chatzi, M.D., Ph.D., University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine — Los Angeles — co-funded with NIEHS
• Tanika N. Kelly, M.D., M.P.H., Tulane University — New Orleans — co-funded with NIEHS
• Joseph McCormick, M.D., University of Texas Health Science Center — Houston — funded by NCI

Omics production center and principal investigator

• Gary J. Patti, Ph.D., Washington University — St. Louis

Data analysis and coordinating center and principal investigator

• Zhiping Weng, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School — Worcester — co-funded with NCI

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health^®

###

Source: US Department of Health and Human Services – 2

News Release

Monday, September 11, 2023

NIH researchers combined historical air quality data with breast cancer data from large U.S. study.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health found that living in an area with high levels of particulate air pollution was associated with an increased incidence of breast cancer. The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is one of the largest studies to date looking at the relationship between outdoor air pollution, specifically fine particulate matter, and breast cancer incidence. The research was done by scientists at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), both part of NIH.

The researchers saw that the largest increases in breast cancer incidence was among women who on average had higher particulate matter levels (PM_2.5) near their home prior to enrolling in the study, compared to those who lived in areas with lower levels of PM_2.5. Particulate matter is a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets found in the air. It comes from numerous sources, such as motor vehicle exhaust, combustion processes (e.g., oil, coal), wood smoke/vegetation burning, and industrial emissions. The particulate matter pollution measured in this study was 2.5 microns in diameter or smaller (PM_2.5), meaning the particles are small enough to be inhaled deep into the lungs. The Environmental Protection Agency has a website known as Air Now where residents can enter their zip code and get the air quality information, including PM2.5 levels, for their area.

“We observed an 8% increase in breast cancer incidence for living in areas with higher PM_2.5 exposure. Although this is a relatively modest increase, these findings are significant given that air pollution is a ubiquitous exposure that impacts almost everyone,” said Alexandra White, Ph.D., lead author and head of the Environment and Cancer Epidemiology Group at NIEHS. “These findings add to a growing body of literature suggesting that air pollution is related to breast cancer.”  

The study was conducted using information from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, which enrolled more than 500,000 men and women between 1995-96 in six states (California, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Louisiana) and in two metropolitan areas (Atlanta and Detroit). The women in the cohort were on average about 62 years of age and most identified as being non-Hispanic white. They were followed for approximately 20 years, during which 15,870 breast cancer cases were identified.

The researchers estimated annual average historical PM_2.5 concentrations for each participant’s residence. They were particularly interested in air pollution exposures during a period of 10-15 years prior to enrollment in the study, given the length of time it takes for some cancers to develop. Most previous studies have assessed breast cancer risk in relation to air pollution around the time of study enrollment and did not consider past exposures.

“The ability to consider historic air pollution levels is an important strength of this research,” said Rena Jones, Ph.D., senior author and principal investigator of the study at NCI. “It can take many years for breast cancer to develop and, in the past, air pollution levels tended to be higher, which may make previous exposure levels particularly relevant for cancer development.”

To consider how the relationship between air pollution and breast cancer varied by the type of tumor, the researchers evaluated estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) and -negative (ER-) tumors separately. They found that PM_2.5 was associated with a higher incidence of ER+ breast cancer, but not ER-, tumors. This suggests that PM_2.5 may affect breast cancer through an underlying biologic pathway of endocrine disruption. ER+ tumors are the most common tumors diagnosed among women in the United States.

The authors note that the study was limited in its ability to explore any differences in the relationship between air pollution and breast cancer across the different study areas. They suggest future work should explore how the regional differences in air pollution, including the various types of PM_2.5 women that women are exposed to, could impact a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer.

Grants: This research was funded by the NIEHS and NCI Intramural Program, 1ZIAES103332 and 1Z01CP010125.

 About the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS): NIEHS supports research to understand the effects of the environment on human health and is part of the National Institutes of Health. For more information on NIEHS or environmental health topics, visit https://www.niehs.nih.gov or subscribe to a news list.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health^®

###

Source: US Department of Health and Human Services – 2

News Release

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Researchers study confluence of multidrug resistance and hypervirulence among Klebsiella pneumoniae.

New “hypervirulent” strains of the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae have emerged in healthy people in community settings, prompting a National Institutes of Health research group to investigate how the human immune system defends against infection. After exposing the strains to components of the human immune system in a laboratory “test tube” setting, scientists found that some strains were more likely to survive in blood and serum than others, and that neutrophils (white blood cells) are more likely to ingest and kill some strains than others. The study, published in mBio, was led by researchers at NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

“This important study is among the first to investigate interaction of these emergent Klebsiella pneumoniae strains with components of human host defense,” Acting NIAID Director Hugh Auchincloss, M.D., said. “The work reflects the strength of NIAID’s Intramural Research Program. Having stable research teams with established collaborations allows investigators to draw on prior work and quickly inform peers about new, highly relevant public health topics.”

More than a century ago scientists identified K. pneumoniae as a cause of serious, often fatal, human infections, mostly in people already ill or with weakened immune systems and especially people in hospitals. Over a span of many decades, some strains developed resistance to multiple antibiotics, and became difficult to treat. This bacterium, often called classical Klebsiella pneumoniae (cKp), ranks as the third most common pathogen isolated from hospital bloodstream infections. Certain other Klebsiella pneumoniae strains cause severe infections in healthy people in community settings (outside of hospitals) even though they are not multidrug-resistant. They are known as hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae, or hvKp. More recently, strains with both multidrug resistance and hypervirulence characteristics, so-called MDR hvKp, have emerged in both settings.

NIAID scientists have studied this general phenomenon before. In the early 2000s they observed—and actively investigated—virulent strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria that had emerged in U.S. community settings and caused widespread infections in otherwise healthy people.

Now, the same NIAID research group at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, is investigating similar questions about the new Klebsiella strains, such as whether the microbes can evade human immune system defenses. Their findings were unexpected: the hvKp strains were more likely to survive in blood and serum than MDR hvKp strains. And neutrophils had ingested less than 5% of the hvKp strains, but more than 67% of the MDR hvKp strains—most of which were killed.

The researchers also developed an antibody serum specifically designed to help neutrophils ingest and kill two selected hvKp and two selected MDR hvKp strains. The antiserum worked, though not uniformly in the hvKp strains. These findings suggest that a vaccine approach for prevention/treatment of infections is feasible.

Based on the findings, the researchers suggest that the potential severity of infection caused by MDR hvKp likely falls in between the classical and hypervirulent forms. The work also suggests that the widely used classification of K. pneumoniae into cKp or hvKp should be reconsidered.

The researchers also are exploring why MDR hvKp are more susceptible to human immune defenses than hvKp: Is this due to a change in surface structure caused by genetic mutation? Or perhaps because combining components of hypervirulence and antibiotic resistance reduces the bacterium’s ability to replicate and survive in a competitive environment.

As a next step, the research team will determine the factors involved in MDR hvKp susceptibility to the body’s immune defenses using mouse infection models. Ultimately, this knowledge could inform treatment strategies to prevent or decrease disease severity. 

NIAID conducts and supports research—at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide—to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID website.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health^®

###