/ Workshop on the Feasibility of Addressing Environmental Exposure Questions USING
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE BIOREPOSITORIES
June 1415, 2018 | Washington, DC
National Academies of Sciences, 2101 Constitution Ave NW, Room 125
The Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology and the Committee on Toxicology are holding a workshop about how biological samples stored in Department of Defense (DoD) Biorepositories can be used to assess environmental and occupational exposures. The workshop may cover issues such as how biomonitoring measurements can be used to reconstruct past exposures, novel methods for assessing exposures, and biomarker interpretation. This workshop aims to have highly technical discussions on the utility and interpretation of environmental and occupational exposures from stored biological samples.
THURSDAY | June 14, 2018 | Room 125Session 1 – Background on DoD Biorepositories and Discussion of Occupational and Environmental Exposure Questions
8:30-8:45 / Registration
8:45-8:50 / Welcome and Introduction to Workshop / Joyce Tsuji, Exponent
8:50-9:30 / Environmental and Occupational Exposure Challenges / Steven P. Jones, Department of Defense
9:30-10:50 / Overview of DoD Repositories
⎯DoD Serum Repository
⎯Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Service members (STARRS) Repository
⎯Murtha Cancer Center Repository / Dr. Mark Rubertone, Defense Medical Surveillance System
Dr. Robert Ursano, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
COL Craig Shriver, John P. Murtha Cancer Center
10:50-11:00 / BREAK
Session 2 –Using Biomonitoring Results to Reconstruct Past Exposures
11:00-11:40 / ⎯Retrospective Exposure Estimation for Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) for Participants in the C8 Health Project
⎯Using Biomarkers to Improve Contact-Based Exposure Assignments: FromValidation to Time-Dependent Calibration / Hyeong-Moo Shin, University of Texas, Arlington
Scott Bartell, University of California, Irvine
11:40-12:00 / Panel and Audience Discussion: How might these techniques be useful to DoD?
Panelists: Session speakers / Moderated by:
Lesa Aylward, Summit Toxicology
12:00-1:00 / LUNCH
Session 3 –Novel Methods of Exposure Assessment
1:00-2:00 / How can we identify exposures using novel techniques?
⎯Protein Adducts as Exposure Biomarkers: The State of the Science
⎯Non-targeted analysis of archived specimens for discovering past exposures
⎯Challenges and Opportunities in Developing a Search Engine for Exposures Associated with Disease Risk / William Funk, Northwestern University
Jon Sobus, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Chirag Patel, Harvard University
2:00-2:45 / Panel and Audience Discussion: How might these techniques be useful to DoD?
Panelists: Session speakers and Ben Blount, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention / Moderated by:
Joyce Tsuji, Exponent
2:45-3:00 / BREAK
3:00-4:20 / How can novel techniques help refine exposure questions of interest?
⎯Deployment-associated exposure surveillance with high-resolution metabolomics
⎯Multi-platform mass spectrometry methods to assess toxicant exposure and biological response
⎯State of the science in dried blood spots
⎯Using pooled samples to refine questions of interest / Dean Jones, Emory University
Doug Walker, Emory University
Jeff Freeman, Johns Hopkins University
Lesa Aylward, Summit Toxicology
4:20-5:00 / Audience Discussion: How might these techniques be useful to DoD? / Moderated by:
James Cerhan, Mayo Clinic
End of Day 1
FRIDAY | June 15, 2018 | Room 125
Session 4–Biomarker Interpretation and Interaction with Disease States
9:00-9:05 / Welcome, Recap of Day 1 / Lesa Aylward, Summit Toxicology
9:05-10:05 / ⎯Biomonitoring considerations critical to generate and interpret exposure data using archived samples
⎯How to assess and interpret the biomonitoring data once you have it
⎯Effect of individual-specific conditions on biomonitoring results: metals as case examples / Antonia Calafat, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Judy LaKind, LaKind Associates
Joyce Tsuji, Exponent
10:05-11:05 / Panel and Audience Discussion: What important factors should DoD consider when generating and interpreting biomonitoring results?
Panelists: Session speakers / Moderated by:
Ben Blount, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
11:05-11:15 / BREAK
Session 5 – Future Directions
11:15-12:00 / Where do we go from here? An audience discussion of what study designs could be useful to meet DoD’s needs. / Moderated by:
William Funk, Northwestern University
WORKSHOP ADJOURNS
Planning Committee for Feasibility of Addressing DoD's Environmental Exposure Questions with Biorepositories: A Workshop
Joyce Tsuji (chair)is a Principal Scientist at Exponent, an Engineering and Scientific Consulting company. Dr. Tsuji is a board-certified toxicologist and a Fellow of the Academy of Toxicological Sciences. She specializes in assessing exposure and risks associated with chemicals, and in communication of scientific issues. She has worked on projects in the United States and internationally for industry, trade associations, U.S. EPA and state agencies, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Australian EPA, municipalities, and private citizens. Dr. Tsuji's experience includes health risk assessment related to a wide variety of chemicals in air, water, soil, foods, consumer products, and medical devices. She has designed and directed environmental exposure studies and community programs involving health education and biomonitoring for populations potentially exposed to chemicals in the environment, including soil, water, and food-chain exposures. Dr. Tsuji has served on expert panels on toxicology and health risks issues for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (including the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology and Committee on Toxicology), and for federal and state agencies. Recent committee service for the National Academies includes the Committee on Airborne Hazards and Burn Pit Registry, Committee on Spacecraft Exposure Guidelines, and the Standing Committee on Medical and Epidemiological Aspects of Air Pollution on U.S. Government Employees and their Families.
Lesa Aylward is a Principal at Summit Toxicology, LLP, located in Falls Church, Virginia, and is an Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, Australia, Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences. She has more than 30 years of experience in chemical risk assessment and hazard communication. She specializes in applying pharmacokinetic modeling and data in the assessment of toxicology, exposure, and risk, including the interpretation of biomonitoring data for assessing human health risks from a variety of chemicals. Dr. Aylward and her colleagues at Summit Toxicology have published on the development of tools for screening-level evaluation of population biomonitoring data for a wide range of chemical compounds in a risk assessment context. Dr. Aylward is an active member of the International Society of Exposure Sciences, the Society of Toxicology (Biological Modeling and Risk Assessment Specialty Sections), and the Society for Risk Analysis. Prior to her position at Summit Toxicology, Dr. Aylward provided consulting services at Exponent, Inc.; BBL, Inc.; and Karch & Associates. She received her B.S. and M.S. in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in toxicology from Utrecht University.
Benjamin Blountis the Chief of the Tobacco and Volatiles Branch of the Division of Laboratory Sciences, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. Over the last two decades, Dr. Blount has developed and applied numerous analytical methods for quantifying environmental toxicants and biomarkers of exposure and effect. Dr. Blount’s recent research interests focus on assessing exposure to tobacco-related toxicants, volatile organic compounds, and toxic anions by measuring biomarkers of these chemicals in human matrices.
James R. Cerhan is a Professor of Epidemiology in the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, and chair of the Department of Health Science Research. He is also co-leader of the Genetic Epidemiology and Risk Assessment Program in the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, co-director of the Biorepositories Program in the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine, and associate director of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Registry. His research is focused on conducting large epidemiologic studies combined with state-of-the-art technologies to identify environmental, lifestyle, genetic, and biological factors that cause lymphoma and impact patient outcomes, as well as understand their underlying mechanisms. Dr. Cerhan is a former chair of the Molecular Epidemiology Working Group of the American Association for Cancer Research, former chair and secretariat of the National Cancer Institute Cohort Consortium, and former chair of the Coordinating Committee of the International Lymphoma Epidemiology Consortium. He received his MD and PhD in epidemiology from the University of Iowa.
William Funkis an Assistant Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University. He received his PhD from the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009, and joined the faculty at Northwestern in 2010. Dr. Funk’s research uses mass spectrometry focused on the development and application of minimally-invasive biomarker approaches for investigating links between the environment and adverse health outcomes. Dr. Funk helped to pioneer the emerging field of adductomics, and has over a decade of experience quantifying protein adducts in venous blood and dried blood spot (DBS) samples as exposure biomarkers. He also developed a highly sensitive DBS method for quantifying toxic metals that can be performed using a single drop of blood collected on specialized metals-free filter paper. Dr. Funk’s current work applies these assays to investigate risk factors associated with diabetes, obesity, autism, preterm birth, and cancer. In addition, Dr. Funk is currently working with the NIEHS-funded Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program as part of the ECHO PRO Core leadership team, the lead of the Biospecimen Collection, Processing, and Storage (CPS) blood collection protocol team, and a member of the Biorepository and CPS Implementation team.