2023 Endowment Awardees
The SOT Endowment Fund is a family of funds that support SOT programs and members. Many of the funds sponsor awards designed to encourage, assist, and highlight toxicology research and toxicologists.
Recipient: Elise Hickman
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dr. Hickman was really excited to receive this award in recognition of her work and that of her collaborators! She expressed they believe this is an impactful project and it is encouraging to see that others think so too. This award will help Dr. Hickman pursue her research by allowing her to network with newer-to-her specialty sections in the field of her postdoctoral training, and by providing funding to help with travel costs to SOT.
Dr. Hickman's research generally is focused on the effects of inhaled toxicants on the respiratory system. Her doctoral research investigated how e-cigarettes affect respiratory immune cells using human in vitro and in vivo approaches. In her postdoctoral research, Dr. Hickman's focuses include understanding wildfire smoke mixtures toxicity using in vitro and computational approaches and the role of extracellular vesicles in respiratory responses to toxicants using human clinical samples. She is also interested in exploring and developing integrated computational analysis methods for toxicologic data. In this specific project, she performed benchmark dose-response modeling to assess interindividual variability in response to acrolein exposure using data derived from an in vitro co-culture model of the respiratory system. This study is among the first to combine in vitro primary co-culture models with advanced computational modeling to expand human response variability assessments in new approach methods-based risk assessment. Dr. Hickman's future goal is to lead an academic research lab.
Recipient: Naresh Sah
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PharmD
Institution/Affiliation: Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
Dr. Sah is truly honored and humbled to have received this incredible award. He would like to thank the selection committee for finding his application competitive. He is immensely grateful for this Scholarship! This fund will offset the travel expense to AACR ANNUAL MEETING 2023, and attending this conference will add one more step forward in his career path. This will be Dr. Sah's first time attending this conference, which will help him better understand the ovarian tumor microenvironment, tumor progression, inflammation, and strategies to employ immunotherapy in new models to test his hypothesis. This will upgrade Dr. Sah's research to a new level by identifying novel targeted and precision therapy for ovarian cancer. Further, this conference will help Dr. Sah grow his research network (meet the brightest scientists in the world) and potentially connect with the important stakeholders of the job market. Through this conference, he is excited to learn new skills/approaches and troubleshoot his current research problems by incorporating their important feedback on his approach and findings. This will also boost his self-confidence in public speaking by pushing him to step out of his comfort zone. The education and training ideas Dr. Sah anticipates receiving will transform him into a more mature researcher and help him to grow professionally and personally.
Dr. Sah is currently working on initiating a Phase I clinical trial with a novel 2nd generation nanoscale drug (CF10), a novel compound. The development of CF10 has the potential to ease the current global burden rate of colorectal cancer which is expected to increase by 60% to more than 2.2 million new cases and 1.1 million deaths by 2030. CF10 might increase the 5-year survival rate for patients with stage IV CRC which is less than 10% in the current scenario. As seen in his in-vivo study, the ability of CF10 to treat metastatic colorectal cancer can improve the prognosis in patients with metastasis which has remained extremely poor so far. Dr. Sah's research also emphasizes crosstalk between altered oncogenic signals with tumor suppressors in regulating cell cycle and DNA repair and their contribution to therapeutic resistance. He is very excited to see the translational relevance of his experiments for treating resistant colorectal cancers (CRCs).
These experiences/networking will help Dr. Sah to pursue better postdoctoral training in a good lab with a relevant but distinct research focus to expand his research expertise and skill set and become more competitive and independent. The discovery of a novel drug for the treatment of metastatic and resistant CRCs will add more meaning to his Pharm.D. background. Finding an innovative solution from a collaborative approach would help him to develop higher-level critical thinking skills. Dr. Sah's long-term professional goal is to set up an exemplary research lab and collaborate with academic institutions, industries, and regulatory agencies to emphasize the research in translating fundamental oncology discovery into therapeutic modalities. Achieving this goal will not only quench his desire to fight threats to many people, including his own family members, but also set an example that belonging to an underdeveloped country like Nepal does not limit anyone from making their big dream come true. Like every drop in the ocean counts, Dr. Sah sees himself moving, though very little, but a step closer to his academic career goal through this research experience.
Recipient: Global Senior Scholar Exchange Program (GSSEP)
Award Year: 2023
The Global Senior Scholar Exchange Program (GSSEP) funds mid-career senior scholars from a Global Economy to attend the SOT Annual Meeting and spend about four weeks with one or more SOT Member Hosts from established toxicology programs in academic, government, or industry organization(s) worldwide. The primary goal is to increase toxicology capacity by providing professional opportunities for scientists through relationships supported by SOT. In 2023, this program was supported in part by the Bruce A. Fowler Global Chemicals Toxicity Fund.
Recipient: Jamie Young Wise
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Louisville
Dr. Young Wise is truly humbled and energized! The Metals Specialty Section is comprised of the best and brightest in metals toxicology, those she has idolized and looked up to since she was a graduate student, and it is truly an honor to be recognized by this group. This award provides a platform by which Dr. Young Wise's research vision will be recognized by others in the field, leading to networking and collaborative opportunities that will help propel her career and the field of metals toxicology forward.
Dr. Young Wise's laboratory seeks to develop insight into how environmental toxicants affect health and cause disease, focusing on environmental liver disease (ELD). Chronic liver disease kills over 2 million people in the United States each year. However, despite advances at the bench and in the clinic, the prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), the most common chronic liver disease, has more than doubled in last two decades and remains on the rise. A “two hit” hypothesis has been used to explain the multifaceted nature of NAFLD with one factor causing a ‘first hit’ sensitizing the liver to a ‘second hit’, resulting in disease progression. The “two hit” hypothesis has focused on factors that alter lipid metabolism, constricting the paradigm to a single hit – fat accumulation. Thus, the second hit driving disease remains unknown. Dr. Young Wise's laboratory takes a novel approach to investigating liver disease by studying chromosome instability, a form of genomic instability that occurs when a cell has an abnormal number of chromosomes or altered chromosome structure, as the second hit driving NAFLD severity and progression. Studies include investigating how sex and age modulate these effects while promoting advances in risk assessment and management of two environmental chemicals of major health concern that are commonly found together: hexavalent chromium [Cr(VI)], an established human carcinogen and inducer of chromosome instability, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), established metabolic toxicants associated with hepatic lipid dysregulation and accumulation. Research in her laboratory spans molecular, cellular, animal and population-based studies with the goal of providing a platform for the creation of novel target therapies and diagnostic tools related to sex (as a biological variable) and age differences in disease etiology.
Recipient: Sebastian Gutsfeld
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research GmbH, UFZ
Mr. Gutsfeld was extremely delighted and honored to learn that he had received the Carl C. Smith Student Mechanisms Award. Due to the difference in time zones, he received notification of the award late at night, so it was the first thing he read in the morning and he was smiling all day long. Mr. Gutsfeld felt highly appreciative that the years of work, including many technical hurdles, that went into this project were recognized by experts in the field of mechanistic toxicology. This award motivates him to continue his line of research and strengthens the impression that his research is on the right track to contribute meaningful knowledge to the field.
Mr. Gutsfeld's work is focused on chemicals in the environment and how exposure to these chemicals affects neurodevelopment in zebrafish. He is especially interested in Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS), as they are widely used industrial chemicals and some are resistant to degradation and detected in humans and environmental samples worldwide. The developing zebrafish provides an excellent tool to bridge the large gap between in vitro new approach methods (NAMs) for the detection of developmental neurotoxicity and in vivo studies in rodents. Early life stage zebrafish develop rapidly and share high genetic homology with humans. It is therefore assumed that a wide range of molecular mechanisms by which environmental chemical exposure causes toxic responses in humans can also be studied in early life stage zebrafish. Mr. Gutsfeld's work investigates potential molecular mechanisms by which a certain class of PFAS disrupt neurodevelopment in early life stage zebrafish. Previous work has shown that exposure to these chemicals cause hyperactivity in an automated behavior test that he uses as a functional readout of neurodevelopment. The underlying molecular mechanisms by which these structurally similar PFAS cause hyperactivity are unknown. Mr. Gutsfeld hypothesized that CRISPR/Cas9-based gene editing could be used to identify causal links between PFAS exposure and hyperactivity. His work identified multiple, distinct hyperactivity effects in zebrafish exposed to structurally similar PFAS and showed that one of them, called visual startle response hyperactivity, is mediated by a gene called ppard. This gene is conserved in humans. Therefore, this work builds confidence in using automated zebrafish behavior tests to identify widely occurring environmental chemicals that harbor the potential to cause neurotoxicity in humans.
Recipient: Sarah Kim
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Washington
Ms. Kim was very elated and grateful to receive the Carl C. Smith Student Mechanisms Award as she is very aware of the prestige and history surrounding this award. It is truly an honor to find her work competitive and recognized by the Mechanisms Specialty Section. This award will provide Ms. Kim with greater confidence and strength to continue pursuing her career in research.
Ms. Kim's research focuses on maternal exposure to environmental chemical exposure, such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and delayed onset of diabetes or liver diseases through understanding the complex interactions among gut microbiome and liver in humanized pregnane X receptor transgenic (hPXR-TG) mice. PBDEs are previously used flame retardants that still bio-accumulate in human compartments, including the maternal blood and breast milk. Previous work showed that developmental PBDE exposure is associated with increased diabetes prevalence in human and animal models. PBDEs are known to activate the host pregnane X receptor (PXR). PXR and gut microbiome are essential regulators of drug metabolism and metabolic disorders. The microbial tryptophan metabolite, indole 3-propionic acid (IPA), can activate PXR (among other receptors like aryl hydrocarbon receptor [AhR]) and is correlated with reduced risk of type-2 diabetes and lower-grade inflammation. One of the key findings of this study is that maternal PBDE exposure produced a pro-inflammatory signature within the gut-liver axis associated with dysregulated tryptophan microbial metabolism and elevated AhR signaling in a male-predominant manner, which was partially corrected by IPA supplementation. Ms. Kim's work mechanistically demonstrates the importance of the gut-liver axis in regulating the early-life PBDE exposure-induced obesity and diabetes later in life.
Recipient: Danielle Kozlosky
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Ms. Kozlosky was on her hour-long, traffic-filled drive home after a very long day in the lab when this email entered her inbox. She was ecstatic upon seeing the news awarding her as recipient of this prestigious award. This award's monetary value will aid in purchasing last-standing reagents to finish up the remaining experiments to complete this study's story.
Ms. Kozlosky's research investigates mechanisms of placental toxicity leading to poor fetal growth and nutrition. Notably, this research analyzes the protection from the expression of a particular xenobiotic efflux transporter against heavy metal placental accumulation and toxicity. This award will aid in completing this specific study which will conclude one aim of her dissertation work. Together, this research brings Ms. Kozlosky one step closer to becoming an independent research scientist in the developmental and reproductive toxicology field.
Recipient: David Umbaugh
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, MS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Kansas Medical Center
Mr. Umbaugh is honored and humbled to be chosen as a recipient of the Carl C. Smith Student Mechanisms Award Fund. This is a very competitive award with an extensive review process and so he is honored to have his work recognized by leaders in the field of mechanistic toxicology. The funds awarded by the Mechanisms Specialty Section will help fund Mr. Umbaugh's travel to scientific conferences and external training opportunities.
Mr. Umbaugh's ongoing doctoral research is aimed at understanding the signaling network between cells in liver injury and acute liver failure (ALF) using insights from scRNAseq data to guide wet lab experiments and identify novel therapeutic strategies that enhance the innate capacity for repair. Acetaminophen overdose is the leading cause of ALF in the United States, and while an extensive body of work has delineated the molecular mechanisms of hepatocyte necrosis, why some patients progress to ALF while other patients survive (even with similar amounts of liver injury) remains unknown. In the current work, Mr. Umbaugh found that the initiation of hepatocyte senescence and the persistent secretion of Cxcl14 occurs in dose-sensitive manner in the acetaminophen overdose mouse model. Moreover, he found that hepatocyte senescence is initiated through a Klf6-p21 mechanism which mediates the production of Cxcl14. However, the most exciting finding is that in acetaminophen overdose patients, Cxcl14 can accurately predict patient survival, as it gradually declines in surviving acetaminophen overdose patients but remains elevated in non-surviving acetaminophen overdose patients. This data suggests that the sustained induction of hepatocyte senescence, and the persistent secretion of Cxcl14, are critical mechanistic events that may explain why some patients progress to ALF while other patients recover after an acetaminophen overdose. Mr. Umbaugh's overall career goal is to be an academic toxicologist who combines wet lab and computational techniques (e.g. multi-omics, 'big data') to derive novel biological insights that translate to the clinic.
Recipient: Hadil Al Muhisen
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD in Toxicology
Institution/Affiliation: Texas A&M University
Dr. Al Muhisen is so honored to receive the Women in Toxicology Award. She felt her heart come back to life again and wanted to invest more in leadership roles and commitment to support more women in the field and be part of the change. She is greatly pleased to be recognized and appreciated for the effort and this means more to her than just an award. Dr. Al Muhisen believes winning this award means belonging to a family and a union to serve for one mission with a good cause. There are not enough words to explain how much Dr. Al Muhisen is thrilled and thankful for this recognition.
Dr. Al Muhisen's research work was focusing on investigating the effect of alcohol on sex differences of neural stem cells using ex vivo models during her master's degree. She then switched her focus to studying male reproductive biology and toxicology to characterize the novel testis-specific actin related proteins (ARPs) and investigating the toxicological profile of Remdisiver with the focus on testis and spermatogenesis during her PhD degree. Dr. Al Muhisen's short-term goal is to continue serving and contributing in the field of DART in the United States and explore more roles to practice her knowledge as CRO, Consultant, or Regulatory scientist in either government or private sector industry or pharmaceuticals. She hopes during her career that she can learn and expand her expertise with DART field and beyond. Dr. Al Muhisen is committed to continue actively serving within the field toxicological societies. In her long-term goals, Dr. Al Muhisen hopes to be part of the decision makers and became an expert leader in the field. She hopes to build international cooperation and work together globally. Dr. Al Muhisen hopes that she can bring change to this world and leave her mark among toxicological societies to inspire other individuals. The Celebrating Women in Toxicology Award Fund recognizes women in toxicology leadership roles and makes an impact to the field in toxicology and helps other women in STEM. This award is to continue supporting other women and recognize their effort in making a change in toxicological societies and the field. Dr. Al Muhisen hopes this award will inspire more women in leadership and contribute to their career choices.
Recipient: Rachel Alford
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS Environmental Science; MS Environmental and Occupational Health in progress
Institution/Affiliation: Indiana University School of Public Health
Ms. Alford is absolutely elated to receive this award. She has been fortunate to have many female STEM role models in her life, and having the opportunity to contribute to the advancement of women in science and toxicology in her work with various community organizations feels incredibly impactful. This award will not only support her research but also her outreach efforts
Ms. Alford studied the influences of sex on the gut and lung microbiome in a mouse model before and after an environmental allergen challenge. Further understanding how sex impacts the body's response to environmental contaminants is vital to progressing women's health research. Outside of the lab, Ms. Alford spends a lot of time teaching and developing supplemental STEM education opportunities for girls ages 5-18, because she believes all girls should have easy access to science. In the future, she would like to do further work on the impact of contaminants on women's health as well as pursue a career related to improving science communication to the public.
Recipient: Alyssa Bellomo
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Ms. Bellomo was extremely happy to win this award for her graduate research work. It means a lot to her to be a part of the Women in Toxicology Special Interest Group and she was very honored to have received this award, which will help Ms. Bellomo pursue her research by funding her travel to Nashville. As a result of the award, her conference fees have been fully covered. It has been a great opportunity to network, meet mentors, and discover potential career paths to pursue after the completion of her degree.
Ms. Bellomo's research centers on how the chemical weapon mustard gas causes lung injury. Mustards are known to cause inflammation leading to progressive lung diseases. She studied this interaction by using a mouse lung explant model, precision cut lung slices. By using this model, she can study early events in mustard-induced lung injury while both reducing and refining animal use in research. During this SOT session, she presented on the lung function and cellular metabolic effects of nitrogen mustard, a specific mustard vesicant. Ms. Bellomo's graduate research has highlighted her passion for creating alternative animal models to help reduce animal use in toxicology. She would ultimately like to find a postdoctoral opportunity that also utilizes alternatives to animal models.
Recipient: Rachel Sun
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PharmD in progress
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Ms. Sun felt it was a great honor to receive the Celebrating Women in Toxicology Award Fund. Receiving this award has inspired her to continue pursuing research, especially considering not only that women are often not represented in science fields, but that she is receiving a competitive award early in her career. This award has given her the motivation to explore her interests and the opportunity to network with amazing researchers in the field.
Ms. Sun's research focuses on immunometabolism - the bridge between immune cell function and metabolic pathways. Alterations in the metabolic activity of the mitochondria by endotoxins can lead to to changes in the outcomes of immune cells. She investigated macrophages, essential innate immune cells that contribute to host defense during inflammatory diseases, and delved deeper into their metabolic profile. In the future, she hopes to target not only the immune-related pathways, but also metabolic pathways to repair cellular function and restore immune homeostasis for translational research.
Recipient: CDI Undergraduate Diversity Program
Award Year: 2023
The Undergraduate Diversity Program takes place during the SOT Annual Meeting and ToxExpo and includes introductory toxicology lectures, participation in mentoring groups, opportunities to meet with academic program directors and toxicologists from different employment sectors, and participation in Annual Meeting sessions. In 2023, this program was supported in part by the Daniel and Patricia Acosta Diversity Student Fund.
Participation in this Committee on Diversity Initiatives (CDI)–led program is limited to the recipients of the Undergraduate Diversity Program Student Awards. Students selected for these awards attend the Undergraduate Diversity Program. Students enrolled at accredited undergraduate institutions are eligible to apply, with preference for sophomores and juniors and students who are from racial/ethnic groups underrepresented in the sciences, are first-generation college students, or are attending institutions receiving low amounts of federal funding for biomedical research.
For insight into how previous Undergraduate Diversity Program awardees have continued in the sciences and transitioned into the biomedical workforce, visit the “Eye on CDI” web page. For reflections on the influence and history of the program, see blogs written by Frederic Moulin and Claude McGowan.
Recipient: Congress of Toxicology in Developing Countries (CTDC) Travel Awards
Award Year: 2023
The Society of Toxicology (SOT) provided funding to the International Union of Toxicology (IUTOX), which was also supported in part by the Daniel and Patricia Acost Diversity Student Fund, to provide travel awards for the 12thCongress of Toxicology in Developing Countries (CTDC) in Santiago, Chile. These travel awards supported junior and senior scientists from countries where toxicology is underrepresented and have an active research program or currently are active in the practice of toxicology.
Recipient: SOT Undergraduate Research Awards (SURA)
Award Year: 2023
The Society of Toxicology (SOT) Undergraduate Student Research Award recognizes outstanding undergraduates who have not yet received their bachelor's degrees and present research at the Annual Meeting. The goal of the award is to foster interest in graduate studies in the field of toxicology. Awardees are selected based on their research and other statements and the nomination of the advisor. Awardees receive national recognition, complimentary meeting registration, and travel and lodging for the SOT Annual Meeting. Each recipient is matched with a mentor for the meeting, recognized during a special event, attends the SOT Undergraduate Education Program, and participates in other meeting activities. In 2023, diverse award recipients were supported in part by the Daniel and Patricia Acosta Diversity Student Fund. A listing of all 2023 recipients can be located on the 2023 Honors and Awards webpage.
Recipient: Pavani Gonnabathula
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: US FDA-NCTR
Dr. Gonnabathula was grateful for the recognition of her work and the support, which bolsters her confidence and encouraged her to keep exploring new avenues to continue her research in prestigious organization.
Dr. Gonnabathula's research was focused on developing dynamic life-stage models by using PBPK modeling and simulation techniques and applying them to COVID-19 therapeutic drugs for optimal pediatric dosing. She received an award for part of this research on model-based dose suggestions in special populations.
Recipient: Souvarish Sarkar
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: HMS
Dr. Sarkar was thrilled to receive the award. He has previously received the award as a senior graduate student and so receiving this award in his final year of post doc also means a lot and it will help him pursue his career in translational science. It will help him with his confidence as he starts his own research lab.
Epidemiological studies strongly support the role of environmental factors, particularly pesticide exposure, in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD). Genetic risk factors, including penetrant single-gene mutations and risk factors identified from genome-wide associated studies (GWAS), also contribute to PD risk and progression, but available model systems are limited in their ability to interrogate gene-environment crosstalk in vivo and at scale. In order to build a model that can study the interaction among the genome and the exposome in neurodegenration, they had to make sure that the model can be altered in a cell-specific manner, is robust, and can be used for different types of exposure. To serve all these three purposes, they use Drosophila as a model system to understand complex gene-environment interactions in PD. They developed a multiplex model in Drosophila in which they knocked down GWAS candidate genes in neurons or in glia in a new α-synucleinopathy model and exposed the flies to environmental neurotoxicants, rotenone, and Manganese. They identified multiple interactions among various genes, α-synuclein and environmental factors and decided to further study the interaction among LRRK2, rotenone, and α-synuclein. Expression of the disease-causing Lrrk-G2019S mutant in the presence of rotenone and alpha-synuclein-induced behavioral deficits and mitochondrial dysfunction. Further, super-resolution microscopy analysis revealed that the interaction of LRRK2, α-synuclein, and rotenone leads to hyperstabilization of the actin cytoskeleton. They have previously shown that LRRK2 has actin severing activity, and previous studies have implicated the GTPase domain in regulating actin severing. They next expressed a GTPase domain mutant, Lrrk-Q1003H, designed to mimic the human protective mutant LRRK2-R1398H. Interestingly, expression of the LRRK2 protective mutant attenuated behavioral deficits mediated by LRRK2-rotenone-synuclein interactions. Further, the expression of the protective mutant also attenuated the actin stabilization and mitochondrial deficits. Moreover, genetic analysis from a patient cohort who had previous pesticide exposure revealed that the patient's LRRK2-R1398H mutation reduces the chance of developing PD. Since global actin severing may have unwanted side effects, they used a combination of forward genetic screening and proteomics to identify potential kinases that can be druggable targets. They identified Cdc42 binding protein kinase MRCKα, an actin-binding protein, as a potential target. Genetic and pharmacological inhibition of MRCKα in Drosophila can modify the toxicity induced by the interaction among LRRK2, α-synuclein, and rotenone by inhibiting actin hyperstabilization. Using their novel multiplex model in Drosophila, they have identified an interaction between LRRK2, α-synuclein, and rotenone which is modulated by actin stabilization and mitochondrial dysfunction. They have further demonstrated that by using this multiplex approach, they can study the mechanism of these interactions as well as identify novel drug targets for the interactions. Their findings have implications for the development of a personalized approach to drug discovery and lead identification.
Recipient: Christina Klotz
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MSc
Institution/Affiliation: Department of Toxicology, University of Würzburg
Ms. Klotz feels extremely honored to have been awarded the Dharm V. Singh Carcinogenesis Award Fund. Receiving this award is an invaluable recognition which inspires, and motivates her to continue research on elucidating the mechanism of OTA carcinogenicity. She is delighted and thanks the award selection committee of the SOT for this great award.
The focus of Ms. Klotz's research is to further elucidate the molecular mechanism of action underlying the carcinogenicity of Ochratoxin A (OTA) in order to address uncertainties in the current risk assessment of OTA in food. The mycotoxin OTA is frequently found as a contaminant in a wide variety of foods, including cereal products, coffee, spices, fresh and dried fruits, preserved meat and ripened cheese. OTA is a potent renal carcinogen in rodents, raising health concern that dietary intake of OTA may present a tumor risk to humans. The mode of action of OTA carcinogenicity is still poorly understood. In particular, it is not clear whether and to what extent genetic toxicity of OTA contributes to its carcinogenicity, which is one of the major causes of uncertainty in the current risk assessment of OTA in food. Recent in vitro studies conducted by her group provided first experimental evidence that OTA interferes with DNA replication. Using the DNA fiber assay, which is a technique to determine replication fork velocity, Ms. Klotz and her team observed a small but significant delay in replication fork progression in human kidney cells (HK-2) exposed to OTA. Furthermore, immunofluorescence analyses of the DNA damage marker γH2AX revealed yH2AX foci to be colocalized with newly replicating DNA, which indicates a replication-coupled mechanism of OTA-induced DNA damage. However, based on western blot and immunofluorescence analysis it appears that OTA does not effectively activate DNA damage response pathways which are crucial to arrest cell cycle progression and repair DNA damage before cells enter into mitosis. This suggests that the mild levels of replication stress induced by OTA may be not sufficient to elicit a full DNA damage response which may allow cells with under-replicated DNA or unresolved DNA damage to enter mitosis, leading to mitotic defects and chromosome segregation errors observed in response to OTA. Overall, results from this study provide first experimental proof for interference with DNA replication as an early key event in OTA genotoxicity, supporting that mitotic aberrations and genetic damage induced by OTA may arise from unresolved replication stress. Ms. Klotz expects that the knowledge to be gained from this study will significantly support human risk assessment of this important food contaminant by further elucidating the primary molecular events involved in OTA carcinogenicity and by characterizing the dose-response for these key events at the target site of OTA carcinogenicity in rat kidney in vivo.
Recipient: Manasi Kotulkar
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, MS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Kansas Medical Center
Ms. Kotulkar was sincerely honored to have been selected as the recipient of the Dharm V. Singh Carcinogenesis Graduate Student Endowment Award. Receiving it has helped her to find a renewed energy and passion for the work she does. This award is very well recognized in the toxicology community. Receiving the award is going to help her set up the foundations in her career path in toxicology.
The overall goal of Ms. Kotulkar's dissertation project is to investigate the role of the nuclear receptor HNF4α in the pathogenesis of liver diseases including liver cancer. HNF4α is a highly conserved member of the nuclear receptor superfamily that is essential for liver function. HNF4α controls the expression of many liver-specific genes associated with liver functions including drug metabolism, nutrient metabolism, and many other hepatocyte-specific pathways. As part of this project, Ms. Kotulkar is currently studying the regulation of other nuclear receptors which are important for xenobiotic metabolism such as such as Aryl hydrocarbon Receptor (AhR), Constitutive Androstane Receptor (CAR), Pregnane X Receptor (PXR), and Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor-alpha (PPARα) by HNF4α. Their data showed that the function of hepatic AhR, CAR, PXR, and PPARα were disrupted in the absence of HNF4α, and HNF4α is critical for the activation of these toxicologically important hepatic xenosensors. Her findings are significant because recent studies from the Apte Lab showed that a progressive loss of HNF4α is associated with the progression of chronic liver disease that ultimately leads to hepatocellular carcinoma. In the absence of HNF4α, toxicologically important xenosensors are disrupted, which might lead to the dysregulation of genes involved in the ADME of pharmacological agents. This suggests that maintaining HNF4α function is critical for the activation of toxicologically important xenosensors. Ms. Kotulkar's goal is to study the basic mechanisms that connect xenobiotic exposure to cancer pathogenesis in the liver. After her doctorate studies, Ms. Kotulkar would like to continue working in the field of toxicology. She envisages herself working as a toxicologist in the drug industry, where she wants to apply her knowledge to translational toxicology studies. Involvement in the Society of Toxicology, specifically the Carcinogenesis Specialty Section, will allow her to interact, learn, and network with researchers and scientists in the field of toxicology.
Recipient: Idoia Meaza
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MSc, MSc
Institution/Affiliation: University of Louisville
Ms. Meaza was honored and extremely grateful to receive such a prestigious award. This achievement has further encouraged her to continue devoting herself to her projects and education. This award will help support her travel to the annual meeting in Nashville where she plans to network with fellow peers and experts in multiple disciplines, as well as expand her scientific knowledge and improve her communication skills, by presenting her work. Ms. Meaza would like to express her most sincere appreciation to the Society of Toxicology and especially the Carcinogenesis Specialty Section for this recognition.
The research for which Ms. Meaza won this award focuses on elucidating the mechanisms by which hexavalent chromium causes lung cancer. Previous research in the Wise Lab has shown that prolonged Cr(VI) exposure causes numerical chromosome instability, which is a hallmark of lung cancer. In this project, Ms. Meaza explores the malfunction of the cohesin complex, a ring protein complex whose main functions are to maintain genomic stability. In her work, she shows that cohesin regulators, such as separase and sororin, are affected by Cr(VI) after prolonged exposures and these effects lead to the malfunction of cohesin observed as premature centromere division and spreading, premature anaphase, centriole disengagement and centrosome duplication. Ms. Meaza’s future goal is to become a successful independent researcher in the field of toxicology and has a particular interest in toxicant-induced DNA damage and its effects on chromatin topology.
Recipient: Shivani Singla
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, S.A.S Nagar, India
Dr. Singla was honored, delighted and pleasantly surprised to be selected for this award. She would like to thank her research guide, Prof. G.B. Jena, for his constant support. She is also very grateful to receive recognition for her work from the broader scientific community. It also invokes a great deal of confidence and momentum in realizing goals in her research career.
Dr. Singla is working in the area of colitis associated colorectal cancer and comorbid Diabetes mellitus with central point of role of PARP-1 inhibitors. Epidemiological findings suggest that diabetes represents the relevant risk factor for colitis associated and potentially shared common aetiological mechanisms. In light of the fact that PARP-1 inhibitors have emerged as one of the most intriguing new therapeutic targets for various malignancies as well as DM. PARP-1 inhibitors are exciting new treatment options that are easily administered, highly effective and are associated with few drug dependent side effects. Present study can be considered as novel approach to treat colitis associated colorectal cancer alone as well as associated with comorbidity i.e., Diabetes mellitus.
Recipient: Eric Brown Jr.
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BA
Institution/Affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Mr. Brown was excited to learn about receiving this award as it enables him to further examine how exposures to metals mixtures are associated with disease, specifically adverse neonatal outcomes. This award will directly assist him in the pursuit of a multidisciplinary approach to model complex environmental chemical mixtures, enhancing the statistical methods used in his dissertation. Furthermore, as a first-generation college student, this opportunity will expand his personal and professional network to achieve his long-term professional goal of becoming a principal investigator.
Mr. Brown's research uses sophisticated approaches to investigate the mechanisms that underlie the association between exposure to complex chemical mixtures and adverse health outcomes across the life course. He characterizes these associations using transdisciplinary approaches from scientific fields including molecular epidemiology and computational biology. In particular, he is interested in elucidating how exposure to metals, individually or in mixtures, can lead to preterm birth. For his career development award, Mr. Brown will learn different advanced statistical approaches for handling complex chemical mixtures. He will also explore the molecular drivers in the placenta that mediate the effect of environmental metals on preterm birth.
Recipient: Chelsea Cary
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Ms. Cary was very excited and grateful upon seeing the news that she won this award. This award will allow her to attend SMDP Biotech which she believes will be a pivotal moment in her career development.
Ms. Cary researches how inhalation of micro and nanoplastics throughout pregnancy affects uterine and placental vessels.
Recipient: Mahmoud Salem
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees:
Institution/Affiliation: SUNY at Stony Brook
Mr. Salem was very excited to receive this award, which he believes allows him an easier road to his academic goals. He is very pleased to have an organization supporting his academic success.
Mr. Salem's research explores the mechanism behind PFAS degradation by bacteria, and he also works in biomarker discovery. His ultimate goal is to become a MD-PhD recognizing how chemicals start and end tumors. This award will help him in acquiring skills with transcriptomic studies that the industry performs on tumor cells, and the treatment transcriptomics he hopes to do with the bacteria.
Recipient: Antonio Saporito
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BA
Institution/Affiliation: NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Mr. Saporito is quite excited to receive this award as it means he can pursue a course called "Environmental Mixtures" and help build his understanding of exposure science and risk assessment regarding mixtures.
Mr. Saporito is a 2nd year graduate student pursuing a degree in Environmental Health Sciences looking to examine the health risks and exposure associated with occupational cooking in commercial cooking. He hopes to become involved in academia or government work.
Recipient: Ashley Valentina Schwartz
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: San Diego State University
Ms. Schwartz is extremely excited and grateful to be chosen as a recipient of the Diversity Initiatives Fund Award. The receipt of this award will allow her to expand her skill set and research endeavors by providing the financial support to attend an advanced research course titled Gene Regulatory Networks for Development offered by the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. The course will be conducted by leading developmental biologists from across the country. This opportunity will provide complementary training for Ms. Schwartz's dissertation project and give her a new perspective on computational modeling for developmental toxicology.
Ms. Schwartz's research is in the field of developmental toxicology with a primary focus on computational and biological modeling. She aims to develop and utilize computational and mathematical models to identify the way environmental contaminants affect embryonic development. Recently, she developed a dynamic network model that elucidated the impact of developmental abnormality co-occurrence observed in the zebrafish model following exposure to the environmental contaminant tris(4-chlorophenyl)methanol (TCPMOH). To further advance this research, Ms. Schwartz intends to expand the network modeling approach to diverse developmental toxicity datasets for a broader translational impact. She hopes to advance the field of computational developmental toxicology throughout her PhD studies and to establish a career as an impactful interdisciplinary scientist.
Recipient: Talia Seymore
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Upon receiving this award, Ms. Seymore was ecstatic but most of all grateful. This award will play a large role in the progression of her research by helping her to attend a conference that has a sole focus on the placenta, the main character of her dissertation project.
Ms. Seymore's research focuses on the effect of maternal inhalation of nanoparticles on placental function. The specific project that she will be presenting at the conference looks at the ability of the placenta to transport glucose when put under the stressful environment that the nanoparticles elicit on the uterine environment. Glucose is one of the most important nutrients that have to cross the placenta for healthy fetal growth. Without it, the growing fetus faces developmental consequences. Additionally, Ms. Seymore is investigating how the placenta is metabolizing glucose, given that it needs this molecule as an energy source as well.
Recipient: Jada Spady
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: The Pennsylvania State University / Genentech
Ms. Spady had just finished her last final exam when she opened the email announcing that her application was selected for the 2023 Diversity Initiatives Fund Award. She felt a rush of excitement and gratitude that the Committee on Diversity Initiatives was able to recognize her achievements and support her on her scientific plan path. This award will support her during her summer internship to expand her network, work to be a leader in her field, and further develop her skills in clinical drug development research.
Ms. Spady is a current senior undergraduate at The Pennsylvania State University majoring in Pharmacology and Toxicology. This summer, she will be working as an intern for Genentech within the clinical pharmacology developmental sciences department in San Francisco, California. She will have the privilege of doing quantitative research to determine therapeutic drug dosages for ongoing clinical trials, alongside some of the brightest minds in the biotech industry. This award helped fund Ms. Spady's journey to start this opportunity. She plans on applying to PhD programs in the fall of 2023, and will take advantage of this internship to add leverage to her application and further her studies in pharmaceutical sciences.
Recipient: Morgan Domanico
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of California Davis
Ms. Domanico is very honored to be an SOT Inhalation and Respiratory Specialty Section (IRSS) Donald E. Gardner Inhalation Toxicology Education Award recipient. This award will allow her to pursue a very exciting training opportunity in lipidomics and apply this expertise to her dissertation research. Lipidomics approaches have only recently been implemented to explore respiratory toxicants, but with great success in providing new insights, and so it is important to continue to implement this emerging technology and powerful tool.
A portion of Ms. Domanico's dissertation research investigates the effects of toxicant exposure on the developing airway. Lung development continues to occur postnatally and is known to have increased susceptibility to air pollutants. Ms. Domanico intends to use lipidomics to investigate a possible mechanistic explanation of observed phenotypic changes following toxicant exposure. It is her belief that this will be the first lipidomics application in a developmental model exposed to the under-studied toxicant. The findings will be used in Ms. Domanico's dissertation and shared with the scientific community in a peer-reviewed journal. Lipidomics is an emerging field and this training will allow her to carry forward that knowledge into her next research position as a respiratory toxicologist.
Recipient: Sarah Avila-Barnard
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Riverside
Ms. Avila-Barnard's initial reaction was complete gratitude and respect for the award committee as well as BDRP for providing her with the opportunity to attend this conference by relieving her of some of the financial travel burdens. She felt very honored and elated to be receiving an award that will allow her to attend a conference where she truly gets to immerse herself in the knowledge that focuses on understanding and protecting developing embryos, fetuses, children, and adults against potential hazards. In addition, being able to collaborate with a variety of scientists which come from extremely diverse backgrounds helps Ms. Avila-Barnard to grow both personally and professionally in her future career path by extending her network and providing her with a framework for what to expect in the years to come. She is truly captivated by the adventure that has been her PhD journey and to be part of wonderful organizations such as BDRP.
Ms. Avila-Barnard is a PhD Candidate at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), in Environmental Toxicology (ETOX), where she seeks to reveal how exposure to organophosphate flame retardants alters early embryonic development, cellular metabolism, and global DNA/RNA methylation in zebrafish and human cell-based model systems as part of the Volz lab. Throughout graduate school, Ms. Avila-Barnard has served in multiple leadership roles including within the ETOX graduate student association, where she mentored first-year graduate students, maintained the financial budget for the ETOX graduate student association, served on the planning committee for the program’s annual symposium, as well as organized annual interdepartmental and collaborative events for her graduate community. She has also served as an ETOX social event coordinator for trainees, supported by UCR’s NIEHS-funded T32 training grant, focused on environmental toxicology. As a senior graduate student within her PI's lab, she has had the opportunity to mentor, train, and work closely with several undergraduate student researchers within the Environmental Sciences, Cellular, Molecular and Developmental, and Biology programs as well as a first-year ETOX PhD student within her PI's lab, providing her additional opportunities to hone on instructional, mentorship, and leadership skills. Ms. Avila-Barnard has authored four peer-reviewed papers in Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology, Environmental Research, Environment International, and the Journal of Visualized Experiments. Her newly developed method for in situ detection of 5-methylcytosine within developing zebrafish embryos was published as a methods paper in JoVE. In addition, she is currently using pharmacologic strategies to probe potential mechanisms underlying the effects of TDCIPP within HEK293 cells. Her current project will serve to increase and promote the exchange of information and perspectives on applied toxicology, developmental toxicology, and safety assessment of organohalogen flame retardants, a known hazard to human health. She has been a BDRP graduate student member since 2021. After graduation, Ms. Avila-Barnard intends to pursue a postdoctoral scholar position at a research-intensive university. Her career goal involves becoming an academic researcher who helps further science communication and education, guides the pathway for future minority student researchers within the field, and serves communities while collaborating with other researchers/health professionals/decision-makers who share similar goals.
Recipient: Josh Everson
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Texas
Dr. Everson felt excitement, joy, and validation when he received this award. As a long time teratology researcher, he was thrilled that the award committee chose him. He understands the critical need to disseminate research findings to the wider scientific community and public, and this award promises to bring more eyes to his work. But overall, it refills his enthusiasm to keep grinding towards the next big discovery! Thank you!
Dr. Everson's work focuses on understanding the complex origins of the birth defects that affect thousands of children each year. Specifically, he uses animal models to examine gene-environment and co-environmental interactions, which are thought to account for the large number of human birth defects. His current work leverages the higher throughput capacity of zebrafish to identify chemicals and chemical combinations that adversely affect brain and face development. Specifically, he has developed a higher throughput assay for detection of brain and face defects in zebrafish. Zebrafish embryos, which are optically clear, can be engineered so that specific cells of interest (e.g., face cells or brain cells) fluorescently glow. These embryos can then be exposed to chemicals, and fluorescent glow can be measured in high-throughput using a plate reader. Dr. Everson found chemicals that cause craniofacial birth defects caused dose-dependent reductions in fluorescent glow, which positively predicted craniofacial defects later in development. Together, this provides a sensitive and fast method for prediction of hazardous chemicals and mixtures. His future goal is to lead a research program at a public US university, where hazardous chemical combinations and gene-chemical interactions will be identified using the enhanced throughput of zebrafish, and then validated and finely characterized in mice. Overall, Dr. Everson's goal is to provide avenues for birth defect prevention by identifying and communicating chemical risks, to clarify the black box of human birth defect etiology.
Recipient: Danielle Kozlosky
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Ms. Kozlosky was ecstatic upon receiving news of being awarded this very prestigious award. As she is at the tail end of her PhD, she has been noticing diminished motivation as her final experiments are finishing. Winning this endowment award was the jump-start she needed internally to complete her last few studies and to continue writing her dissertation. Moreover, the monetary award will enable her to purchase crucial reagents that are running low to finish such experiments to complete a sound research story.
Ms. Kozlosky's research examines mechanisms of placental toxicity resulting in fetal growth restriction in mice. The study herein investigates the protection conferred by a single placental efflux transporter against heavy metal placental accumulation and fetoplacental toxicity particularly focusing on placental vascularization and fetal nutrition. In the future, she plans to become an independent research scientist in the developmental and reproductive toxicology field. Thus, having been awarded distinguished recognition through this award is vital in advancing her career goals.
Recipient: Alison Neff
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, MS, PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Upon receiving this award, Dr. Neff felt happiness and excitement because it will help her share her work with the toxicology community.
Dr. Neff's research investigates the cellular mechanisms of action underlying the toxic effects of phthalate metabolites in the ovary. The research submitted for this award focuses on the role of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor in the MEHP-mediated decline in estrogen synthesis by ovarian antral follicles. Her future goals are to use her background in physiology and toxicology to work for a government regulatory agency, such as the FDA or EPA, to assess the safety of food, drugs and environmental chemicals for human consumption/exposure.
Recipient: Zakiyah Henry
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University The State University of New Jersey- New Brunswick
Ms. Henry was ecstatic upon hearing that she was a recipient of the Emil A. Pfitzer Drug Discovery Student Award Fund. She is grateful to use this award towards any unmet needs pertaining to her training as a toxicologist. This will award will allow Ms. Henry to focus on completing her research and answering unanswered questions by reducing financial barriers that would otherwise alter the amount of time she can focus on her research.
Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is an increasingly common chronic condition that has harmful effects on the liver. Furthermore, NASH-induced scarring of the liver is the leading indication for liver transplantation in the US. There are no FDA-approved drugs for NASH treatment; however, the Farnesoid X Receptor (FXR) has proven to be beneficial in the treatment of this disorder. Ms. Henry is specifically interested in how FXR functions in a tissue and cell-specific manner to reduce adverse effects of drugs for NASH patients, and to support the development of novel and safe therapeutics for the treatment of NASH. She is using various mouse models to discover underlying mechanisms contributing to FXR functionality differences between various cell and tissue types. In the future, she is hopeful that she will identify altered genes and pathways as a result of FXR tissue-specific modifications that can be targeted for drug development.
Recipient: Danielle Kozlosky
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Ms. Kozlosky was ecstatic upon seeing the news awarding her this prestigious honor. She dreams of entering the field of drug discovery in the near future, so having this achievement is excellent motivation for her to achieve her career goal. The monetary value of this award will help Ms. Kozlosky finish the final experiments remaining for her dissertation work.
Ms. Kozlosky's work examines mechanisms of placental dysfunction resulting in poor fetal growth and nutrition. This specific work investigates the protection conferred by a single efflux transporter against placental heavy metal accumulation and toxicity. Her future goals include entering the field of drug discovery, particularly with a focus on developmental and reproductive toxicology.
Recipient: Piyush Padhi
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Georgia
Mr. Padhi felt honored and extremely pleased to be recognized for the Emil A. Pfitzer Drug Discovery Student Award Fund. This award further cements his interest in developing and assessing novel eLBP that address critical unmet needs for other neurological and non-neurological disorders. By attending SOT, this award will help Mr. Padhi maximize his research goals, which includes building and fostering new and old collaborations that will enable the additional discoveries to drive this novel drug modality to patients.
Mr. Padhi's research and work involves the development and pre-clinical assessments of a novel genetically engineered microbial live-biotherapeutic that continuously produces a mainstay drug for Parkinson's Disease L-DOPA. He used various models to assess the feasibility of his programmable microbe for future NHP and human trials. Findings from his studies enable a completely novel paradigm of drug delivery mechanism using safe, host-residing microbes.
Recipient: Aggie Williams
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD Candidate - Pharmacology and Toxicology
Institution/Affiliation: University of Louisville
Ms. Williams declares it an absolute honor to receive this Environmental Carcinogenesis Research Fellowship Fund. This award is not only a symbol for academic excellence, but also a way for her to connect with an amazing group of scientists.
Ms. Williams' project investigates the mechanism of Cr(VI)-induced carcinogenesis and focuses on particulate Cr(VI) compounds because they are the most potent Cr(VI) carcinogens. Cr(VI) is a metal known to cause cancer but its mechanism of action remains unknown. Her project investigates RAD51 and its paralogs, key proteins within a DNA repair pathway as a novel mechanism of Cr(VI) toxicity. Her future goal is to become an independent researcher in the field of metals, with a focus on lung cancer and mechanisms that can be applied to many other cancers. The research for which Ms. Williams won this award is looking at how Cr(VI) alters RAD51 complexes in humans and comparing outcomes to alligators for species differences.
Recipient: Jon C. Cook
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD, DABT, ATS
Institution/Affiliation: Pfizer Inc.
Jon C. Cook, PhD, DABT, ATS, is the recipient of the 2023 SOT Founders Award (for Outstanding Leadership in Toxicology) in recognition of his career in industry that has focused on human health and risk assessment supported by state-of-the-science research.
Dr. Cook earned his PhD in toxicology from North Carolina State University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology (CIIT) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. At CIIT, he began work on the toxic mechanisms of dioxin that would directly inform dioxin’s human health risk assessment. He then spent 11 years as a Research Toxicologist with DuPont-Haskell Laboratory for Toxicology and Industrial Medicine, starting his research on endocrine-related issues and carcinogenicity of chemicals. Dr. Cook, his laboratory, and his collaborators made several important contributions to the development of screening batteries and risk assessment methods for endocrine-disrupting chemicals at a period in the history of toxicology when the science was just evolving. He also was one of the first to identify mechanisms of carcinogenicity of peroxisome-proliferating chemicals and drugs and for perfluorinated chemicals, which remains a major issue in public health to this day.
Since 1998, Dr. Cook has been with Pfizer Inc. where he is Vice President of Scientific Research and Chief Toxicology Scientist. At Pfizer, Dr. Cook has extended his expertise in mechanisms of carcinogenicity to the study of hemangiosarcomas. He collaborated with major researchers in the field to develop a body of work that showed the lack of relevance of rodent hemangiosarcomas to human health and allowed rational regulation and use of drugs that caused rodent hemangiosarcomas. Dr. Cook also continued research in developmental and reproductive toxicology, contributing to several publications on this topic, particularly on COX inhibitors and their developmental toxicity. He continues to be active in the developmental and reproductive toxicology area with endocrine-related research publications and a recent book chapter.
Regarding his scientific leadership, Dr. Cook has both a broad and deep understanding of toxicological sciences ranging from traditional histopathology to state-of-the-art approaches such as microphysiological systems and machine learning. He has a compelling interest in novel science and has always been very supportive of new approaches even if their use is not immediately apparent. For example, Dr. Cook was a strong advocate of introducing what were once considered new molecular biology techniques, such as cloning and polymerase chain reaction, to help elucidate the mode of action for peroxisome proliferators. Dr. Cook, among others, used his considerable expertise and inclusive style to bring in a new way of thinking which led to an international consensus on mode of action and the associated species differences in the response to peroxisome proliferators and implementation of risk assessment guidelines to ensure safe levels of exposure. Dr. Cook has published his research extensively from 1983 through 2022 in leading journals, the most recent on drug-induced liver injury that utilized machine learning to compare the predictive performance of in vitro assays versus physicochemical parameters.
Dr. Cook has contributed his expertise to SOT in numerous roles, including SOT 2011–2012 President, SOT Carcinogenesis Specialty Section President, SOT Workshop Session Co-Chair, and SOT Committee roles. He is Past President of HESI. He also has been active in the International Life Sciences Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Recipient: Lei Zhang
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: Texas A&M University
Ms. Zhang was so excited when she received this award as it will help her to build up her confidence in this field.
Ms. Zhang will keep exploring the natural products as an anti-cancer drug with targeting on NR4A1. She is currently interested in flavonoid groups. Some of these compounds have very good anti-cancer effects but the mechanisms are still unknown. They are promising compounds for anti-cancer drug development and Ms. Zhang will investigate flavonoids as NR4A1 ligands and involve in NR4A1 downstream prooncogenic gene expression.
Recipient: Emily Golden
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, MFS, PhD
Institution/Affiliation: Johns Hopkins University - Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing
Dr. Golden was honored and very excited to receive this award. The funds from this award helped cover the expenses to the annual SOT meeting. Attendance at this meeting is critical for professional networking and feedback on her research.
Dr. Golden's work focuses on evaluating the performance of computational models to evaluate chemical toxicity. Her future goals include helping the for-profit sector use alternatives to animal tests, such as computational models, to evaluate chemical toxicity and identify safer chemicals. She also wants to develop and lead courses on using computational tools to evaluate chemical hazard and identify safer chemicals.
The research Dr. Golden focused on for which she won this award involved exploring how to improve computational approaches to predict skin allergy induced by chemicals (i.e., skin sensitization). Computational tools make a prediction for a chemical with unknown hazard by using existing toxicity data for structurally similar chemicals. Structural similarity is traditionally defined using a 2-D definition; however, this is not reflective of the true shape of a chemical. In this research, Dr. Golden used a 3-D definition of chemical structural similarity to determine whether that improved predictive accuracy. Overall, the assessment was limited by the small data set; however, there were some areas of the chemical space where a 3-D definition of structural similarity did improve predictive accuracy. Dr. Golden will continue to explore the usefulness of 3-D structural similarity definitions in future work.
Recipient: Tim Leach
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (Wake Forest Baptist Health)
When Mr. Leach received this award, he was extremely excited and appreciative to the committee for choosing his abstract. Receiving this award provides validation for all of the hard work that he has put into developing this model and transitioning it for work in the field of toxicology. Only recently did Mr. Leach switch the focus of his research to using this 3D in vitro model for toxicology work. This award helps support his travel to not only the SOT conference, but also his continued professional development in the field of toxicology. Beyond the financial support it provides, receiving this award provides a significant confidence boost in not only this research, but also in himself.
Mr. Leach's research involves the development of an advanced cell culture model of the human airways using multiple primary cell types. With this model, he is investigating the toxicology of novel tobacco products and noxious gases, such as chlorine gas. With the FDA Modernization Act, there is the need to develop more advanced cell culture-based models and the goal is to examine the benefits of this model compared to current models available. Specifically for this award, Mr. Leach has been investigating novel tobacco products, such as e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn products, using the human airway cell culture model to determine acute inflammatory effects and cytotoxicity. With the drastic changes in the tobacco and e-cigarette market in the past decade, there is a need for models to evaluate their safety and toxicity. Only recently has there been a shift in regulation of these products. Mr. Leach's future goal, after he successfully defends his PhD dissertation, is to transition into industry. He hopes to leverage his knowledge of advanced cell culture models and toxicology to help improve our understanding of airway toxicology. He believes that the FDA Modernization Act is a defining moment in the regulatory field and he hopes to become a leader in his field to help determine the best models for analyzing drugs, products, etc.
Recipient: Alicia Lim
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BA, BS
Institution/Affiliation: Texas A&M University
Ms. Lim was extremely excited and honored to learn that she had received the RSESS Graduate Student Excellence Award. This award reaffirms the importance of her research in the field of regulatory and safety evaluation, and will help her further her research and professional career by encouraging her to attend additional conferences and trainings that she would have otherwise not gone to.
Over the past couple of decades, there has been an ongoing push towards reducing the use of animal testing. In response, many New Approach Methods, or NAMs, have been developed as alternatives. There is a wide variety of NAMs, ranging from in vitro assays using animal or human cells to in silico methods using computational models. One such NAM are microphysiological systems, or MPS. MPS strive to bridge the gap between traditional 2D in vitro assays and humans by adding physiological parameters such as barrier or flow. While MPS are now commercially available, there is still a need for independent testing and validation of these models to generate trust in their robustness and reproducibility. There is also a need to determine the context of use for each MPS, as they are all unique. To fill in these gaps, Ms. Lim's research focuses on testing the reproducibility and robustness of a particular liver MPS under varying culture conditions and cell type combinations. Through these methods of validation, her research shows how to use MPS effectively, and improves confidence while contributing to a greater level of trust in MPS, which will help facilitate the regulatory use of MPS in the safety assessment of chemicals and drugs.
Recipient: Frederic Lu
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MD, MPH
Institution/Affiliation: Joint Graduate Program in Toxicology (JGPT), Rutgers University
Dr. Lu did not expect to win anything for his first SOT conference, so he was thrilled to get the good news. The sweet sense of validation for all his hard work was most gratifying, especially because his decision to enter the research world meant branching outside his skillset and comfort zone as a clinician. Dr. Lu's award will go to much-needed study supplies that will greatly help him complete the next portion of his current project and bring him a few steps closer to becoming an independent investigator.
Dr. Lu's research focuses on air quality because many of his patients are veterans with unexplained illnesses that may be related to exposures to airborne hazards during their military service. He firmly believes that physicians should strive to also be clinical investigators to further the field of medicine. To that end, Dr. Lu aims to become a subject matter expert and an independent investigator. For the project honored by this SOT award, he is using a chamber study to investigate the hypothesis that carbon dioxide (CO2) inhalation causes cognitive dysfunction in humans. The proposed model features leukocyte activation and vascular inflammation. His data thus far is supportive of this model and underscores the urgent need for further studies of CO2 toxicity and reassessment of occupational exposure limits for CO2, especially in safety-sensitive settings.
Recipient: Jephte Akakpo
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Kansas Medical Center
Dr. Akakpo was very excited and thankful to receive this award.
Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is a prominent health concern as well as a major challenge for drug development worldwide. One of the most common causes of DILI in the western world is acetaminophen (APAP) overdose. In addition to liver injury, patients with APAP overdose also develop acute kidney injury, which is a syndrome that has progressively been recognized as a major cause of worsening patient prognosis after toxic APAP ingestion. Thus, Dr. Akakpo's current research focuses on conducting translational studies to decipher the unclear renal mechanisms of injury after an APAP overdose. This work may reveal new biological targets exploitable in novel drug development to prevent renal complications after APAP overdose.
Recipient: Zachery Jarrell
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BSA, MAT, PhD
Institution/Affiliation: Emory University
Dr. Jarrell was elated to receive this award. This is his first time being recognized for his postdoctoral work with any award, and it is incredibly validating. For one, Dr. Jarrell hopes that having this award on his CV will speak volumes as he begins planning the next steps of his career. Aside from that, he really needs a new computer as he's working on a 6-year old laptop that he uses for the majority of his writing and data analysis. It sounds like a jet engine whenever he tries to run any advanced scripts, and the number of restarts needed each day keeps increasing. The money from this award is going to enable Dr. Jarrell to make a much needed upgrade and keep him doing his work with far fewer hiccups.
Dr. Jarrell's work involves studying a class of plant-derived metal chelators called phytochelatins. These chemicals are present in all human diets, but their activity in humans is not described. He is working to build out science's understanding in that area. These phytochelatins are capable of impacting mineral and heavy metal distribution in the body. Dr. Jarrell is pursuing a career in academia, and he wants his program to continue this type of work with more dietary constituents. He thinks there is a lot to learn about how bioactive compounds in the human diet influence the burden of dietary exposures. Dr. Jarrell's specific research submitted for this award involved characterization of metabolism of phytochelatins in humans and their associations and interactions with Cd in renal reuptake of Cd.
Recipient: Isha Mhatre-Winters
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS, PhD
Institution/Affiliation: Florida International University
Dr. Mhatre-Winters is honored and humbled to have been awarded the Gabriel L. Plaa Education Award. She was thrilled to share this news with her mentors who are outstanding role models and show relentless support in her endeavors. Receiving this award early in her career will be an unique opportunity to propel her career as an academic researcher in neurotoxicology, and broaden her network within the SOT community.
Dr. Mhatre-Winters' current research is focused on studying the gene-by-environment interactions in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), specifically the novel hypothesis that APOE genotype and sex modify the response to DDT in humanized targeted replacement APOE3 and APOE4 mice. Although APOE4 is the strongest genetic risk factor, it is not entirely predictive of late-onset AD, and emerging evidence points to environmental factors in the etiology of the disease. She recently reported novel and significant translational evidence of the pesticide DDT on AD pathology (PMCID: PMC9364816), which was abolished by pretreatment with tetrodotoxin, a sodium channel blocker, in vitro. She has also previously shown that APOE4 individuals with increased levels of DDT’s primary metabolite DDE performed worse on a cognitive function task than APOE3 individuals (PMCID: PMC4132934). With minimal success in identifying patients earlier in the progression of AD, it has become evermore evident that there is an urgent need to identify predictive risk factors, including environmental factors, along with genetic risk factors such as APOE4. To provide a more personalized therapeutic option for patients, understanding the converging pathways of disease would greatly aid in better understanding and allow patients to receive drugs with a specific mode of action, which may be more efficacious.
Recipient: Rizwana Begum
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: Southern University and A&M College
This award has given Ms. Begum a significant recognition of her research abilities and potential. It has boosted her confidence and motivation and provided validation for the hard work and effort she put into the research project. In terms of pursuing research, winning this award can provide Ms. Begum access to resources such as funding, conferences, and networking opportunities. She feels that these resources are crucial for advancing research projects and connecting with other researchers in the field.
Ms. Begum's project work focuses basically on e-cigarette aerosol induced inflammation in adenocarcinoma lung epithelial cells. She has won the award for the research that determined the role of DAMPs dependent TLR-4/RAGE mediated downstream signaling during e-cig vapor exposure.
Recipient: Dipro Bose
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MTech
Institution/Affiliation: University of California Irvine
Mr. Bose is extremely honored and humbled to be receiving this prestigious award. He would like to thank the awards committee of the Association of Scientists of Indian Origin Student Award and the Society of Toxicology for selecting his research work. Mr. Bose is extremely grateful to his PhD mentor, Dr. Saurabh Chatterjee, professor at University of California Irvine and a well recognized scientist in the field of toxicology for his valuable guidance and support in Mr. Bose's doctoral study research work.
Mr. Bose's research work is on Gulf War Illness, which is a chronic multisymptomatic condition that continues to persist among the aging GW Veterans to date. At present he is investigating the role of representative Gulf War chemicals in causing neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration using translatable Gulf War Illness animal models.
Recipient: Piyush Padhi
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Georgia
Mr. Padhi is very delighted and honored to receive this award. This award will help with furthering his goal of introducing a novel neurotherapeutic modality for neurodegenerative disease. This award help help Mr. Padhi gain insight into toxicological mechanisms of his novel neurotherapeutic.
Mr. Padhi's research involves developing novel engineered microbiome-based therapeutic for Parkinson disease. This therapeutic involves sustained and consistent delivery of the L-DOPA, a major precursor drug for PD. In developing this novel therapeutic, he utilized various models to assess its pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and efficacy.
Recipient: SOT Undergraduate Research Awards (SURA)
Award Year: 2023
The Society of Toxicology (SOT) Undergraduate Student Research Award recognizes outstanding undergraduates who have not yet received their bachelor's degrees and present research at the Annual Meeting. The goal of the award is to foster interest in graduate studies in the field of toxicology. Awardees are selected based on their research and other statements and the nomination of the advisor. Awardees receive national recognition, complimentary meeting registration, and travel and lodging for the SOT Annual Meeting. Each recipient is matched with a mentor for the meeting, recognized during a special event, attends the SOT Undergraduate Education Program, and participates in other meeting activities. In 2023, this program was supported in part by the Harry W. Hays Memorial Fund. A listing of all 2023 recipients can be located on the 2023 Honors and Awards webpage.
Recipient: Hinaben Agraval
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: National Jewish Health
Dr. Agraval felt very humbled, incredibly thankful, and excited when she received the email confirming that she had been awarded the Health and Environmental Science Institute Immunotoxicology Young Investigator Student Award Fund. This award, the first award of her postdoctoral career, will encourage her immensely to pursue mechanistic toxicology research with a renewed rigor. This award will also provide Dr. Agraval with the opportunity to network with elite toxicologists of the field which is essential for her career growth.
Dr. Agraval's research project involves investigation of the role of electronic cigarettes and tobacco smoke in airway innate immunity and host defense against pathogens. Her current research work that got her this award has, for the very first time, revealed the direct and detrimental effect of electronic cigarette exposure on viral infections in human distal lung, a major site of tissue inflammation and destruction in patients with COPD and emphysema. In future, Dr. Agraval hopes to explore underlying detailed molecular mechanisms of electronic cigarette smoke induced dysfunction of host defense against airborne pathogens.
Recipient: Catalina Cobos-Uribe
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Ms. Cobos-Uribe was very excited to receive this award. This was the first time she has received an award from the Hispanic Organization of Toxicologists. She will use this travel award to cover the travel expenses for SOT 2023.
The project with which Ms. Cobos-Uribe won this award has to do with the complex chemical mixtures that e-cigarette users are continuously inhaling. With this pipeline she was able to identify various exogenous compounds (in addition to nicotine) in the upper airways of e-cigarette users. Her future research will focus on establishing the biological effects of these chemicals.
Recipient: Natalia Pascuali
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Illinois-Chicago
Dr. Pascuali was delighted to receive this recognition of her work. This award has encouraged her to continue working hard and also has made her feel valued and included in this wonderful society. Coming from a developing country like Argentina, this award is huge for Dr. Pascuali. The award has allowed her to travel to SOT 2023 and present her work in front of many colleagues from all over the world. Their feedback and career advice will prove instrumental to Dr. Pascuali in the years to follow.
Dr. Pascuali's work focuses on describing the alterations that the compound tributyltin causes in ovarian cells. This is important because tributyltin can be found anywhere (including food and human tissues) and it affects lipid metabolism. Characterizing the way tributyltin dysregulates ovarian lipids (which are key to producing hormones) can help understand possible damaging effects to fertility. In this study, Dr. Pascuali analyzed mouse ovaries exposed to tributyltin using a state-of-the-art approach called MALDI-TOF MSI that allowed her to visualize different lipids and how abundant they were in different ovarian compartments. She found several lipid dysregulations caused by this chemical. Dr. Pascuali's results will pave the way to identify the mechanisms by which tributyltin affects ovarian function.
Recipient: Christian Zamora Gonzalez
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: Cinvestav
This is Mr. Zamora Gonzalez's very first SOT Meeting ever, and he was so happy to receive this award. Currently in Mexico, people are living through some huge economic issues, so this award means a huge monetary help for him to have this amazing experience. He hopes to compete in the future for additional funding, and thanks SOT for creating this opportunity.
Temephos is a chemical compound which is highly recommended by some public institutions, like WHO and EPA, for larvae mosquito elimination. At lower concentrations than they recommend, they observed some toxic effects in the female reproductive system, more specifically in both embryo development and implantation, as well as fetal development. In summary, their results suggest that a chemical compound considered safe may impair some reproductive outcomes, as well as some newborn detrimental effects, due to the intrauterine growth restriction (related with too many developmental effects in children). His future goals in this work are to complete the "story" of the Temephos toxicity: he would love to learn how to work with embryos, do some in vitro research, as well as to learn and apply modern reproductive research techniques that in Mexico they do not have. Additionally, an important researcher from the University of Illinois invited Christian to her university to learn some of the techniques that they are lacking in Mexico. This might mean that he could do hist postdoc with her or her colleagues. However, step by step... Christian's specific research is Female Research and Embryo Development in the Hispanic Organization of Toxicologists (HOT) Special Interest Group.
Recipient: Wentao Li
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Georgia
Dr. Li is deeply pleased and honored to receive this prestigious award. He is grateful for the recognition and support from the James A. Swenberg Carcinogenesis Merit Award Fund. The financial assistance that this award provides will enable him to learn about the latest and most relevant environmental health science by attending the annual SOT meeting, and that will be very helpful for conducting his research.
The research in Dr. Li's laboratory focuses on the role of DNA damage and repair in mutagenesis and carcinogenesis caused by environmental carcinogens such as UV, cigarette smoke, and mycotoxin. His contributions to the field of carcinogenesis lie in the development of a method that can be used for mapping all DNA damages processed by nucleotide excision repair and his research work on the mechanism of this repair pathway. Dr. Lis has a long-standing desire to understand the mechanisms of DNA damage and repair, and, particularly, the role of DNA damage and repair in mutagenesis and carcinogenesis. He will use the newly developed method to identify the precise locations of DNA damage and to measure the repair efficiencies at those DNA damage locations. He would like to determine how factors influence both the induction of DNA damage formation and the efficiency of repair. Findings from these studies may improve the prevention strategies for environmental carcinogenesis and contribute to the development of new tools for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
Recipient: Graduate Internship Fellowship in Toxicology Program
Award Year: 2023
Description: Immersion in internships provides students with a unique appreciation of the day-to-day activities of toxicologists and paths for career success in industry, government, and nonprofit organizations. Such opportunities can help students establish their professional network, build confidence in career choices, and ultimately better prepare to transition into these employment sectors upon graduation.
In 2023, the James Bond-Michele Medinsky Graduate Student Development Temporary Fund supported an internship award through the Graduate Intern Fellowship in Toxicology (GIFT) program. The GIFT program offers graduate students funding to engage in internships within industry, government, and nonprofit organizations. This program enables outstanding doctoral students to pursue an internship in toxicology that advances their professional and scientific development.
Recipient: Yunqi An
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Dr. An was clueless about winning this prize and it came as complete amazement. The only thing she can express is her sincere gratitude. Dr. An believes this is one of the most important honors of her professional career and she is grateful to all the people who helped her. This award will encourage her to continue working on her thesis project and present her research to other scientists.
Dr. An's research focuses on the effects and mechanisms of different xenobiotics-induced toxicity in various human cells. In the future, Dr. An would like to become a toxicologist to apply what she has learned in graduate school in the industry. The present study characterizes the DDR signaling in human keratinocytes exposed to UVB. Taken together, Dr. An has found that UVB activated DDR signaling in human keratinocytes; expression of activated DDR proteins was cell cycle-dependent and UVB-induced oxidative stress independent. Induction of the DDR response in the cells is due to double-strand DNA breaks as a consequence of the repair of DNA photoproducts. The results of these studies will identify the role of oxidative stress and DNA damage responses in UVB-induced toxicity in human keratinocytes and provide a better understanding of the mechanisms of UV light carcinogenesis. Defining mechanisms of UVB-induced DNA repair will be critical for understanding processes leading to skin tumor formation.
Recipient: Shan Liu
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: New York University
Dr. Liu is very excited and grateful for receiving this award. It is not only financial support but also a big encouragement for her research. She will spend the award on her travel to the SOT Annual Meeting so she can share her study with other scientists.
Dr. Liu's research is focusing on investigating the underlying mechanism of heavy-metal-induced cancer. Her future goal is to be a professor at a university. The specific research for which she won this award is identifying Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) as mediators of nickel-induced cancer progression. EVs are lipid-bound vesicles released by all types of cells. They are one of the ways cells send messages (nucleus, proteins, and lipids) to each other. Under normal conditions, cells do not produce many EVs, because they don't have many "messages" to share with each other. However, when cells undergo stress or pathological changes, cells may release an increased number of EVs. In her study, Dr. Liu found that Ni-exposed cells release a significantly higher number of EVs compared to unexposed cells. Recipient cells have a preference for uptaking Ni-altered EVs, and these EVs can induce inflammation in the recipient cells.
Recipient: Lei Zhang
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: Texas A&M University
Ms. Zhang was so excited when she received the award notification because she won't be eligible to apply for this student award in the future as she is going to graduate this summer. She is so grateful to AACT to give her this prestigious award. Ms. Zhang hasn't yet thought about how to spend this money but is very likely to spend it on an iPad.
Ms. Zhang's research interests have been focusing on investigating the mechanism of diseases (mainly cancer) and developing drugs, which include characterizing their toxicities and side effects. She is currently investigating piperlongumine, another well-studied natural product with anticancer activities that also may act as an NR4A1 ligand. Piperlongumine is a phytochemical produced from long pepper that was identified in a library screen of natural products as a potent inhibitor of cancer cell and tumor growth via induction of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Many of the responses and genes modulated by piperlongumine are similar to those reported for bis-indole-derived compounds (CDIMs) that bind nuclear receptor 4A1 (NR4A1, Nur77). Ms. Zhang is eager to combine the knowledge and research experience to contribute to drug development and investment decisions in the company and to bring truly effective cancer treatment drugs to the market and save more lives in the future.
Recipient: Lucie Ford
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Texas A&M University
Ms. Ford was very honored and excited to receive this award. She has learned a lot about risk assessment throughout her graduate career and has been implementing it into her research to provide more context for real-life applications in regulatory science. Therefore, receiving the Risk Assessment award was very exciting to know that her research is being recognized by those working in Risk Assessment. This award will help financially support Ms. Ford's future engagement with SOT at the annual meetings and she will seek other professional development opportunities to learn more about risk assessment, that can then be applied to her graduate research. She is very excited to attend and present her research at the 2023 SOT Annual Meeting.
Ms. Ford's research as a graduate student focuses on using different in vitro models, both population-based models and various organotypic models to investigate inter-individual variability and identify potential organ-specific toxicities. She uses these different in vitro models to screen environmental chemicals and defined mixtures that model real-life exposure scenarios to identify potential effects following exposures. She plans to use the knowledge that she has gained throughout her graduate education to pursue a career in industry. Ms. Ford's goal is to apply her knowledge in assessing inter-individual variability as well as investigating mixtures, as these aspects are often overlooked in regulatory science. The specific research that she will be presenting at SOT and for which she received the John Doull Risk Assessment Endowment Award studies the potential effects of a library of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) using a compendium of human cell lines from various organs. She used the bioactivity data to help group and prioritize these chemicals, which can be used in future applications for PFAS studies.
Recipient: Pavani Gonnabathula
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: NCTR-USFDA
Dr. Gonnabathula is extremely thankful and honored to be chosen for this award. As a postdoctoral fellow, she feels receiving this award brings not only a recognition but also gave more motivation for future research. She hopes this award brings an opportunity to network with an eminent researcher in the future.
Dr. Gonnabathula's research mainly focuses on developing and applying physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models of COVID19 relevant drugs for special population (perinatal life stages) to ensure safety and efficacious doses. Physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling is a computational approach that accounts for the dynamic physiological changes of the perinatal period and evaluates its impact on drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME) to inform appropriate dose adjustments. The current study focused on development of Paxlovid (Nirmatrelvir and ritonavir) adult PBPK model and extrapolation to special population for modeling-based predictions.
Recipient: Manasi Kotulkar
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Kansas Medical Center
Ms. Kotulkar is delighted to receive this award. It has provided her encouragement to work harder. Receiving this award has helped set the foundation for her career path in toxicology. She also thanks the Specialty Section for their generosity. It has allowed her an opportunity to interact, learn and network with researchers and scientists in the field of toxicology by attending the annual SOT conference.
Hepatocyte nuclear factor 4alpha (HNF4α) is a highly conserved member of the nuclear receptor superfamily which regulates more than 60 percent of hepatic gene expression. In Ms. Kotulkar's current study, she found that HNF4α is important for the activation of other hepatic nuclear receptors such as AhR, CAR, PXR and PPARα. These receptors are called as xenosensors because they detect the exposure of xenobiotics in the system and carry out appropriate toxicological response. Previous studies have shown that progressive loss of HNF4α is associated with progression of liver diseases. With low expression of HNF4α there will be less activation of hepatic xenosensors in the disease condition. This might lead to poor ADME of pharmacological agents and poor elimination of environmental toxicants. That is why it is important to maintain HNF4α expression in disease condition. After her doctorate studies, Ms. Kotulkar would like to continue working in the field of toxicology. She envisages herself working as a toxicologist in the drug industry where she can apply her knowledge for translational toxicology.
Recipient: Subhajit Roy
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Irvine
First of all, Mr. Roy is more than happy and thankful to the ASIO award committee. He especially wants to thank his supervisor, Dr. Saurabh Chatterjee, without whom this research would not have been possible. Winning this award is a precious and wonderful achievement for Mr. Roy. It has emphasized the motivation and satisfaction in performing active research. This has boosted his spirits up for the efforts he has given in his work. Being a researcher in the field of toxicology, this award is not only a recognition of Mr. Roy's research, but will encourage him to continue his work in the future with similar pace.
The specific research for which Mr. Roy won this award focused on the immunopathology and inflammatory response mechanisms in aging individuals (mice model) exposed to climate change adversity: heat stress followed by Vibrio infection. This research revealed how alterations of gut microbiome correlates with the changes in mucosal and systemic immune response providing important clues to the vulnerability of aged mice to higher Vibrio virulence. It also showed the mechanism of poor treatment outcome in Vibriosis caused by heat stress in terms of anti microbial resistance. Collectively, this work opened up a new dimension to the insights of Vibrio toxin effects and future concerns emerges from periodic heat waves.
As a doctoral student under supervision of Dr. Saurabh Chatterjee at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health in the University of California, Irvine, Mr. Roy specifically worked on how climate change stressors modulate the host immunity and alters the organ specific inflammation in conjecture with changing host gut microbiome and possible dual exposures. His future goal is to delve deep into the mechanisms of immuno-modulation caused by climate changes and also to explore concomitant cellular pathways of inflammation.
Recipient: Punnag Saha
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: University of California Irvine
Mr. Saha was extremely honored and delighted when he received this great news. He sincerely feels that it is always extremely special to be awarded this sort of accolade from an honorary research interest group like the Association of Scientists of Indian Origin, and winning the award will surely amplify his confidence in both personal and professional levels. Additionally, it will motivate Mr. Saha to work even harder so that he can further achieve many such accolades in the future and become a successful toxicologist. Finally, Mr. Saha wants to convey his sincere gratitude to his mentor Dr. Saurabh Chatterjee, Professor at the University of California Irvine for his tremendous support, mentorship, and guidance throughout the period of Mr. Saha's doctoral study.
Mr. Saha is currently a PhD student at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, which is affiliated to the Program of Public Health, University of California Irvine. His current research describes the effects of the cyanotoxin Microcystin-LR in altering the gut microbiota in a experimental mice model and how this Microcystin-mediated alteration of the gut microbiota can modulate the intestinal microenvironment leading to increased risk of non-cholera vibriosis. In the future, Mr. Saha wants to further establish the novel mechanistic angles of the Microcystin-mediated gut microbiota alteration and intestinal pathophysiology.
Recipient: Aiman Abzhanova
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: UNC at Chapel Hill
Ms. Abzhanova is honored and humbled to have been selected for a 2023 SOT Inhalation and Respiratory Specialty Section Mary Amdur Student Award. She feels encouraged to continue her research on wood smoke-induced toxicity.
Ms. Abzhanova's research focuses on the harmful effects of wood smoke on human health, specifically in the respiratory system. She built a unique system to study how freshly generated wood smoke affects differentiated human airway epithelial cells. Cells at the air-liquid interface are exposed to wood smoke in a controlled environment, and she monitored their responses in real time. Ms. Abzhanova found that exposure to wood smoke can lead to a disturbance of redox balance as reported by a fluorescent sensor roGFP2-Grx1. She also found that the oxidative effect of wood smoke on cells was not caused by carbon monoxide exposure. The study is ongoing and will provide mechanistic insight into the adverse health effects of wood smoke. Ms. Abzhanova is grateful to the Inhalation and Respiratory Specialty Section Mary Amdur Student Award for the recognition of her work.
Recipient: Vingie Ng
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Iowa
Ms. Ng was surprised and delighted when she got this award. Receiving this award will enable her to attend her first ever national SOT meeting, where she looks forward to engaging with peers in her field about her research, and hopes to be inspired by potential collaborators so she can continue research in inhalation toxicology.
Ms. Ng's work involves using translational mouse models to study the health effects of inhaled e-cigarette aerosol, with her most recent study being in an allergic asthma model. Sex differences in immune responses is a main focus. In the future, she would like to broaden her research to include other substances that vapers inhale (e.g., cannabis) and continue studying the impact on immune responses stratified by sex.
Recipient: Hyunjin Kim
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, BA
Institution/Affiliation: Purdue University
Mr. Kim finds that attending the SOT Annual Meeting is always a great pleasure and upon learning that he will be receiving this award gave him another reason to look forward to the conference. He was delighted by the announcement and the award serves as a powerful encouragement and motivation to keep pursuing his research.
Mr. Kim's research investigates the role of chronic manganese exposure in Alzheimer's disease (AD) etiology by focusing on its contribution to disrupting glutamate neurobiology. To this aim, they use human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cortical neurons and astrocytes to address transcriptomic and functional alterations caused by manganese and how that is altered by an individual's genetic predisposition to AD.
Recipient: Haiyan Lu
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MD, PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Louisville
Dr. Lu is very grateful to have received this award. This award made her realize the great significance of her research and encouraged her to work hard to overcome the difficulties encountered in her research. This award has largely motivated Dr. Lu to continue working on her current project.
Dr. Lu's project studies the carcinogenic mechanisms of hexavalent chromium. Chromium is an agent that causes lung cancer and is common in the environment. Her project is translating Cr-induced DNA damage and DNA repair impacts from human lung cells to lung tissue to answer the research question: Does Cr cause genetic effects in actual lung tissue? Dr. Lu translated Cr-induced DNA damage and HR repair deficiency to rat lung and human tumor tissue. She treated rats with Cr for 90 days, Cr did increase DNA double strand breaks in rat lungs. Then she looked at RAD51. Cr does inhibit HR repair in rat lungs. Then she wanted to know whether Cr-induced DNA damage and HR repair deficiency are persistent or not. Dr. Lu measured DNA double strand breaks and HR repair in human lung tissue. She did see increased DNA double strand breaks and HR repair is inhibited in tumor tissue. She successfully translated Cr(VI)-induced DNA double strand break and HR repair inhibition from cells to experimental animals, and Cr(VI)-associated human lung tumors. Dr. Lu's next steps will be to further measure additional steps in homologous recombination repair in rat lungs.
Recipient: Idoia Meaza
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Louisville
Ms. Meaza is very grateful and honored to receive such a prestigious award. This award will help her advance her career as a young toxicologist by supporting her travel to the annual SOT conference in Nashville. This meeting will be an incredible opportunity to network, improve her presentation skills, and learn about the state-of-the-art science in her field.
Ms. Meaza's study focuses on investigating the mechanisms of hexavalent chromium-induced lung cancer by focusing in chromosome instability. Specifically, she investigated the effects of Cr(VI) on cohesin, a protein complex whose functions are tightly involved in maintaining genomic stability. In the future, Ms. Meaza would love to continue working in metal-induced toxicology by specifically focusing in genomic instability and chromatin topology.
Recipient: Alexandra Nail
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Louisville
Dr. Nail was so excited to receive this award as she is relatively new to the toxicology field. The award was used it to offset travel and lodging costs needed to get to the 2023 SOT conference.
Dr. Nail's postdoctoral research in the States lab has focused on determining the molecular mechanisms that drive arsenic-induced skin cancer. For this award, she determined that chronic arsenic exposure reduces DNA damage pathway activation that is normally required to help signal to the cell that DNA breaks have occurred, and, to help call proteins to the sites of DNA breaks so they can be repaired properly. Her future plans include becoming an independent investigator. This work was a launching point for her career because it engaged her interest in DNA repair mechanisms. Dr. Nail's independent lab's research will focus on determining how environmental exposure to heavy metals initiates heavy metal-induced cancers.
Recipient: Maureen Sampson
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: Emory University
Dr. Sampson was grateful to receive this award from the Metals Specialty Section.
Dr. Sampson exposed human iPSC-derived brain organoids to the heavy metal lead, one of the most well-characterized neurodevelopmental toxicants, and found that it altered cell fate by acting directly on neural progenitors. Overall, Dr. Sampson is interested in how gene x environment interactions contribute to the risk and severity of neurodevelopmental disorders.
Recipient: Nivetha Kamalavannan Subramaniam
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BSc
Institution/Affiliation: McGill University
Ms. Subramaniam was extremely excited and delighted to know that she was rewarded 2nd prize for her project. This award is certainly motivation for her to work harder and to further succeed in her research.
Cardiometabolic diseases such as stroke, heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic dysfunction- associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) are the most prevalent chronic diseases worldwide. Increasingly, environmental exposure to metals, such as arsenic (As) and cadmium (Cd) is linked with increased risk of these diseases. Although many individual metals may play a role in disease development, little is known about the effects of low dose metal mixtures on cardiovascular and fatty liver disease outcomes. Previously, using a combination of in vitro and in vivo models, they studied the effects of As/Cd mixtures on early events and plaque development associated with atherosclerosis. For the in vitro study, they investigated early pro-atherogenic changes in macrophages and endothelial cells with metal treatments. In vivo, they utilized the well-characterized hyperlipidemic apolipoprotein E knock-out (ApoE-/-) mouse model. They have shown that low concentrations of As (down to 10 ppb) induce atherosclerosis in ApoE-/- mice. In addition, this model has also been used with Cd to demonstrate pro-atherogenic effects, although at concentrations above human-relevant exposures. The researchers looked at low dose environmentally relevant concentrations of As, Cd and the co-exposure, and considered sex as a biological variable. Together, their findings suggest that there is differential sensitivity of cell types to metal mixtures in vitro, however, there are not significant atherosclerotic changes in the combinations of As/Cd beyond the individual metals alone. Nevertheless, there are some interesting sex-specific differences in the ApoE-/- mice. This is part of a project presented in a poster presentation in SOT 2023. Currently, they aim to define markers of fatty liver phenotype in ApoE-/- mice after low dose exposure to As/Cd as single agents and in combinations. More importantly, although humans and mice have developed the mechanism to metabolize inorganic arsenic through a series of reactions by arsenic-3-methyltransferase (As3MT), mice display much higher rates of As methylation and detoxification compared to humans. Thus, to account for these interspecies differences in As methylation, they are currently extending their analyses to the humanized BORCS7/As3MT mouse model to better study the cardiometabolic outcomes in humans after low dose metal exposure.
Recipient: Ishita Choudhary
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: DVM
Institution/Affiliation: Louisiana State University
Dr. Choudhary was very excited and honored to receive the "Immunotoxicology Mitzi and Prakash Nagarkatti Research Excellence in Immunotoxicology Award." She would like to thank the SOT Immunotoxicology Specialty Section for this generous award. This award will help her defray the costs associated with traveling and lodging to attend the SOT Annual Meeting.
Dr. Choudhary's research is focused on investigating the molecular mechanisms of allergic asthma pathogenesis. She is particularly interested in understanding the cell-specific role of IL4Rα signaling in allergic asthma. IL4Rα signaling has been known to play a key role in allergic asthma pathogenesis. Mice with germline deficiency of IL4Rα are completely protected against allergic asthma. However, the cell type-specific role of IL4Rα-mediated signaling in allergic asthma has remained unclear. Dr. Choudhary is using various transgenic mice models to answer her research questions. Her future goal is to be a scientist and have her lab to explore unanswered and pressing questions in the field of lung diseases resulting from environmental toxicants.
Recipient: Hannah Lovins
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: The Ohio State University
Ms. Lovins is extremely grateful to have been selected for this year’s Mitzi and Prakash Nagarkatti Research Excellence in Immunotoxicology Award. Since joining the immunotoxicology field during her dissertation research, Ms. Lovins has found Drs. Mitzi and Prakash Nagarkatti to be inspirations and she aspires to make the impact they have each made with their innovative research. Receiving this award is an incredible honor for Ms. Lovins, where she is now able to continue exploring her passions for immunotoxicology research and mentoring the next generation of scientists.
Ms. Lovins’s research focuses on novel molecular mechanisms by which the criteria air pollutant, ozone (O3), increases susceptibility to chronic infectious and inflammatory diseases. Ms. Lovins is investigating whether acute O3 exposure reduces pulmonary production of specialized pro-resolving lipid mediators (SPM), leading to impaired resolution of inflammation and aberrant lung remodeling. More specifically, Ms. Lovins utilizes dietary supplementation of the omega-3 fatty acid, Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), to investigate whether increased metabolism of EPA into the SPM Resolvin E1 (RvE1) leads to a reduction of O¬3-induced lung inflammation and injury through RvE1 interacting with its G protein-coupled receptor, ChemR23. Ms. Lovins’s future goals include pursuing postdoctoral training and ultimately become a faculty member at a predominately undergraduate institution, with a passion for inspiring the next generation of scientists.
Recipient: Emily Stevenson
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, MS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Ms. Stevenson feels very honored to be selected for this award, and she is grateful for the recognition of her work by the Immunotoxicology Specialty Section. Receiving this award will help to broaden her network and increase the visibility of her research at SOT.
Broadly, Ms. Stevenson's work investigates the role of cholesterol in the lung, and how this important molecule plays a role in macrophage-mediated inflammation and resolution of lung injury. The enzyme Acat-1 is principally responsible for cholesterol esterification and lipid droplet formation in macrophages, and the presence of lipid-laden macrophages in the lung has been implicated in the failure to resolve lung injury. The work for which this award was received indicates that the inhibition of Acat-1 limits pulmonary fibrosis in a mouse model. Ms. Stevenson plans to continue to research in the area of lung pathophysiology and innate immunity by pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship in this discipline, with a view to becoming an independent biomedical investigator.
Recipient: Sarah Avila-Barnard
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Riverside
Ms. Avila-Barnard was elated to have received this award as it will help her further her career goal of becoming an academic researcher who helps further science communication and education, guides the pathway for future minority student researchers within the field, and serves communities while collaborating with other researchers/health professionals/decision-makers who share similar goals.
Ms. Avila-Barnard is a PhD Candidate at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), in Environmental Toxicology (ETOX), where she seeks to reveal how exposure to organophosphate flame retardants alters early embryonic development, cellular metabolism, and global DNA/RNA methylation in zebrafish and human cell-based model systems as part of the Volz lab. Throughout graduate school, she has served in multiple leadership roles including within the ETOX graduate student association, where she mentored first-year graduate students, maintained the financial budget for the ETOX graduate student association, served on the planning committee for the program’s annual symposium, as well as, organized annual interdepartmental and collaborative events for her graduate community. She has also served as an ETOX social event coordinator for trainees, supported by UCR’s NIEHS-funded T32 training grant, focused on environmental toxicology. As a senior graduate student within her PI's lab, she has had the opportunity to mentor, train, and work closely with several undergraduate student researchers within the Environmental Sciences, Cellular, Molecular and Developmental, and Biology programs as well as a first-year ETOX PhD student within her PI's lab, providing her additional opportunities to hone on instructional, mentorship, and leadership skills. Ms. Avila-Barnard has authored four peer-reviewed papers in Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology, Environmental Research, Environment International, and the Journal of Visualized Experiments. Ms. Avila-Barnard’s newly developed method for in situ detection 5-methylcytosine within developing zebrafish embryos was published as a methods paper in JoVE. In addition, she is currently using pharmacologic strategies to probe potential mechanisms underlying the effects of TDCIPP within HEK293 cells. Her current project will serve to increase and promote the exchange of information and perspectives on applied toxicology, developmental toxicology, and safety assessment of organohalogen flame retardants, a known hazard to human health. She has been a SOT graduate student member since 2021. After graduation, she intends to pursue a postdoctoral scholar position at a research-intensive university. Her career goal involves becoming an academic researcher who helps further science communication and education, guides the pathway for future minority student researchers within the field, and serves communities while collaborating with other researchers/health professionals/decision-makers who share similar goals.
Recipient: Zaria Killingsworth
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS in progress
Institution/Affiliation: College of Charleston
Ms. Killingsworth was very excited to receive recognition for her research! It will help her be able to showcase her foundations in toxicology research and advocate for her skills in liver toxicology research when applying for research positions.
In her research, Ms. Killingsworth works with in vitro models including cell culture to study the effect of an enzyme called CYP2E1 in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Using free fatty acids found in a NAFLD liver, she exposes HepG2 cells expressing CYP2E1 in various organelles to these acids to determine the role CYP2E1 may play in cytotoxicity. They have found that when CYP2E1 is expressed in the endoplasmic reticulum, cells are more sensitive to toxicity from free fatty acids, while mitochondrial CYP2E1 has the potential to be protective for cells. They hope to expand their research to study subcellular localization of CYP2E1 in a broader implication with other drugs and pollutants.
Recipient: Michelle Kossack
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: Brown University
Dr. Kossack was honored to have received such a prestigious award. Being recognized for all of the hard work by a group of talented and engaged scientists was humbling.
Dr. Kossack's research investigates the interaction between reproductive and cardiovascular health in the context of exposure to environmental contaminants. She looks at how exposure to TCDD (dioxin) causes sex-specific changes in cardiovascular function using electrocardiograms (ECGs) and echocardiograms, then she tries to understand how that changes fertility.
Recipient: Danielle Kozlosky
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Ms. Kozlosky was ecstatic upon seeing the news granting her this prestigious award! She has a strong interest in molecular and systems biology as the field is the root of all sciences. She is honored to be awarded this strong recognition in this wonderful field. The monetary value of this award will provide her with the funds and capability to finish the remaining studies from her work.
Ms. Kozlosky's research focuses on studying mechanisms of placental toxicity and poor fetal growth and nutrition. This specific study investigates the protection conferred by a single efflux transporter in the placenta against heavy metal accumulation and fetoplacental toxicity. Her work looks at heavy metal-induced changes in the placenta in mice lacking the transporter. Notably, she examines molecular changes relating to nutrition and placental development. Ms. Kozlosky's future career goal is to become an independent research scientist in developmental and reproductive toxicology. This dissertation work continues to provide her with the strong foundation required to enter the field.
Recipient: Rachel Morgan
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MPH
Institution/Affiliation: University of Michigan School of Public Health
Ms. Morgan was thrilled to find out that she had received a graduate student research award. It is a wonderful reminder that the work she has pursued during her time as a doctoral student is meaningful and rigorous. This award will help support her last semester as a student while she prepares to defend in the Spring.
Ms. Morgan studied how developmental exposures mitigate our risk for adverse neurological outcomes later in life. She studies this relationship via both cell culture and animal models with a focus on how exposures impact gene expression regulation and subsequent effects on neural development. She is excited to pursue this line of research during an academic career, beginning with a postdoctoral fellowship that will include a refined research focus on neurodegenerative disease development, specifically. Ms. Morgan hopes to remain in academia and lead her own research lab. The work for which she won this award pertains to her dissertation work, wherein she is exploring the relationship between developmental lead exposure and neural differentiation (in the SH-SY5Y cell model) and neurodevelopment (in the mouse model), with specific attention paid to the regulation of transposable elements and the expression of the piRNA system, both of which have been linked to neurodegenerative diseases later in life. It is Ms. Morgan's suspicion that exposure to heavy metals early in life increases one's risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases through disruptions to neuron and neural network formations.
Recipient: Joanna Woo
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Ms. Woo was honored to receive this award and to be recognized by MSBSS! Her research is deeply rooted in identifying molecular targets, so to be given this was a confirmation that she is going in a positive direction with her research. With the funds, she plans on using this opportunity to assist her with supplemental classes for in vitro translational models shaping the field of research and data assessment, which is in line with her plans to become a toxicologist specializing in translational techniques in research.
Ms. Woo's research hones in on identifying targets for obesity-associated asthma by finding out what makes one cause the other, focusing on the role of structural cells in the airways that cause contraction. She has been profoundly looking into how messengers in our bodies that are upregulated in obesity can potentially cause asthma to occur when exposed to these contractile cells. Her current area of interest is how a channel increased with exposure to these messengers can cause contraction and remodeling in the airways. This lays a foundation for an entirely new perspective on asthma research by modulating the cell's functional endpoint before contraction occurs.
Recipient: Mackenzie Allison
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Oregon State University
Ms. Allison was shocked when she received this award, as there were so many great undergraduate posters. This award will help her continue her research by allowing her to demonstrate her skills and success in research to graduate programs.
The focus of Ms. Allison's research involved groups of parent and alkylated forms of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that were picked due to their presence at areas of interest such as the St. Helens Creosote Fire mix. These chemicals were used in a 2D cell culture model on primary human bronchial epithelial cells in four concentrations. After the cells were treated with the chemicals for 24 hours, Ms. Allison tested cytotoxicity, ROS production, and mitochondrial membrane potential as different endpoints of toxicity. Along with testing these endpoints, she also isolated RNA from one parent and alkylated products group to perform qPCR with CYP1A1 and CYP1B1 as genes of interest for their role in activating the aryl hydrocarbon receptor. Her future plans involve getting into a graduate program that focuses on human health and toxicology.
Recipient: Namrata Bachhav
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Washington State University
As a graduate student, PANWAT was the first conference Ms. Bachhav attended. The experience of receiving an award for her poster presentation was mesmerizing. She is thankful to PANWAT for providing such an excellent platform for showcasing her research. Certainly, this experience enabled Ms. Bachhav to connect with and interact with a number of other students and mentors in the field. And it gave her the assurance she needed to feel comfortable presenting her research in the future.
In Ms. Bachhav's study, she concentrated on the cell-type-specific effects of MCLR (Microcystin-leucine-arginine), particularly looking at its effects on hepatocytes and stellate cells. In a co-culture system, she looked into the molecular and cellular pathways that were involved in the damage that was caused by MCLR to hepatocytes and stellate cells. In the future, one of her group's primary goals will be to investigate and carry out pathway-specific analysis for the MLCR-induced liver toxicity.
Recipient: Michael Call
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Washington State University
Mr. Call was extremely grateful to receive this award. He is not yet a member of WSU's graduate program and as such has had to pay for graduate courses out of pocket. This award will help him to continue his education until he can be admitted to a PhD program
Ms. Call's current research is in the lab of Dr. John Clarke at WSU-Spokane. He is working on the inhibitory effects of silymarin on the hepatic uptake of microcystin-LR. Future goals include calculating the renal clearance of MCLR as well as identifying the antioxidant mechanism by which silymarin reduces hepatotoxicity to microcystin.
Recipient: Victoria Colvin
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, MS
Institution/Affiliation: Oregon State University
Ms. Colvin was very appreciative of the award and honored that she was chosen from all of the amazing presentations. This award helped to give her more confidence in presenting, and the feedback that she received on her research will help her to strengthen her project.
Ms. Colvin's research focuses on the toxicity and metabolism of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a common air pollutant, in human lung cells. This presentation discussed how PAHs interact with human lung cells in culture and how scientists can validate this culture model for studying PAH toxicity. As she completes her PhD, Ms. Colvin wants to gather more skills in computational models and methods for evaluating toxicological problems such as how the environment may affect Alzheimer's Disease.
Recipient: Kari Gaither
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Dr. Gaither was thrilled to be honored with this award. Receiving such acknowledgment of her efforts towards this area of research is both a testament to the importance of the science, and to her hard work and abilities in what has been a new field for her since starting this postdoctoral position. She is proud of this achievement and hopes that it will be helpful in pursuing future opportunities in her research career.
Dr. Gaither's research focuses on a class of compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that are found in wildfire smoke as well as cigarette smoke, superfund sites, and contaminated food sources. These chemicals can have wide-ranging health effects, including causing cancer or developmental problems, but how they do this is often poorly understood. Her research aims to better understand differences in the metabolism of different PAHs as well as mixtures of PAHs, and to identify the specific enzymes in human bodies that convert these chemicals into less toxic substances or more toxic metabolites. Once she knows that, she can start to look at how differences in these enzymes in individuals could make some people more susceptible to potential negative health effects so they can take appropriate measures to protect their health. This is part of Dr. Gaither's future goals to contribute meaningful research that impacts human health outcomes and to work to improve those outcomes by communicating findings to the public. She typically studies the metabolism of PAHs individually. However, humans are exposed to complex mixtures of PAHs in the environment. In this project, she measured the rates of metabolism of two well-known PAHs, benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) and dibenzo[def,p]chrysene (DBC) in human liver microsomes when exposed either alone or in combination. The goal was to determine whether there was any change in the metabolism of either PAH upon exposure as a mixture. She found that DBC metabolism was slower than that of BaP, and while inhibition occurred for both PAHs in a dose dependent manner, BaP more potently inhibited DBC metabolism. Dr. Gaither then incorporated her findings into a computational model describing the metabolism of both PAHs by modifying previously existing models of BaP and DBC metabolism in humans. The resulting model predicted that inhibition of metabolism only occurred at very high levels of exposure, 5 orders of magnitude higher than normal human exposures, and that DBC inhibition of BaP was more potent. This suggests that inhibiting the relatively quickly metabolized BaP from being broken down causes a more dramatic build-up of the compound in the body than inhibiting the degradation of the slower metabolized DBC. It also provides the conclusion that, at least in the example of these BaP and DBC, there is no increase in health risk of exposure to a mixture than the individual components at common levels of human exposure.
Recipient: Madeleine Koegler
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Oregon State University
Ms. Koegler was extremely grateful to have received this award. It will help her to finance her final year in college before pursuing her future post-graduate education.
At the Tanguay Lab, Ms. Koegler works as an undergraduate researcher in the screening department. Her daily work consists of high-throughput techniques such as collecting, sorting, and plating viable zebrafish embryos for chemical exposure. Her research project aims to make the sorting process of embryos a truly high-throughput process by implementing the Bionomous Eggsorter, a new machine made to address limitations around manual embryo sorting, staging, and plating through trainable AI classification and fluidic pathways. Ms. Koegler's research aimed to evaluate the EggSorter's ability to distinguish between viable and unacceptable embryos, the accuracy in selecting target embryo age stages, and the accuracy and speed in singulating eggs into 96-well plates without damage. The results of her research concluded that the Bionomous Eggsorter had three main problems to improve before routine use in the lab: insufficient AI algorithm training, an embryo-damaging wheel, and double loading of embryos into 96-well plates. The solutions to these problems include AI algorithim training using approved photos taken during her experimentation using the Bionomous, a clean cut wheel material, and adding sufficient embryo numbers into the fluidic system. From Ms. Koegler's research, she has concluded that with improvements, the Bionomous Eggsorter has the capability to automate the sorting of embryos which will increase the efficiency of high-throughput screening.
Recipient: Abigail Lawrence
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Oregon State University
The PANWAT 2022 conference was Ms. Lawrence's first professional conference and it was a fantastic experience, primarily because of the mentoring event. The opportunity to meet professional scientists and to learn how they navigated their careers was inspiring to her as she is about to complete her bachelor's degree and is looking towards her next academic steps. Ms. Lawrence was grateful to receive this award and took it as an affirmation that she was doing the right things to advance herself in her scientific career. She hopes to use this award as a way to showcase her skill in scientific communication and research as she pursues graduate school and industry work.
Last summer Ms. Lawrence had the opportunity to work with Dr. Jennifer Duringer, Dr. Gonzalo Diaz, and Yandy Paez on a collaborative research project between Oregon State University and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. This was part of the Fang Introduction to Toxicology Internships, which provided funding and professional guidance for an 8-week independent research project with the Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology. In this research project, Ms. Lawrence was introduced to fundamental practices important to toxicology research. In this study, spearheaded by Dr. Gonzalo Diaz and Yandy Paez, chicken eggs were found to have an increased fatty acid nutritional profile after consuming the plants with the unknown compounds. The internship project involved analysis of those plant samples using analytical chemistry techniques. These samples contained unknown compounds that were suspected to be important in understanding the overall fatty acid profile of the plants. Ms. Lawrence was able to find that the unknown compounds are likely fatty acids, which support the hypothesis that it is the fatty acid profile of the plants that are affecting the nutritional profile of the chicken eggs. She plans on continuing research in the field of toxicology with the Duringer Lab until she graduates in 2023. Upon completion of her degree in Environmental Chemistry, she hopes to find an internship in a related field before beginning graduate school. She intends on using her passion for analytical chemistry and toxicology to build a career in science.
Recipient: Austin Nichols
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: Undergraduate Student
Institution/Affiliation: Oregon State University
Mr. Nichols was shocked to receive the notice of winning this award as he did not realize they were handing out awards for this event. He was also very pleased that he was recognized for his research. He had worked very hard on it, and getting some recognition was very nice. This award was good motivation to keep Mr. Nichols moving in conducting more research.
In simple terms, Mr. Nichols found the parameters for a rapid throughput assay for zebrafish using the Zebrabox which was designed by viewpoint technology. This will help his lab in providing an additional assay they can use for zebrafish optomotor response. This assay can be used and will most likely be used in conjunction with various high throughput assays already being used within his lab and other labs. Preferably, Mr. Nichols' future work will deal with more clinical trials. He is debating the idea of MD or MD-PhD program. Within the Tanguay Lab, he works on various projects including product design enhancement and imaging.
Recipient: Victoria Oyanna
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, MS
Institution/Affiliation: Washington State University
Ms. Oyanna thanks PANWAT and SOT for this award! She was pleasantly surprised and honored to be one of the awardees this year. This award would allow her to purchase educational resources to aid her research progress and fund registration for upcoming conferences.
Ms. Oyanna's research focuses generally on botanical natural product-drug interactions. Due to the popularity of botanical natural products, there is an increased likelihood of their co-consumption with conventional medicines. This reason increases the potential for a natural-product drug interaction. Her work aims to ensure maximum safety and efficacy with conventional medicines by investigating pharmacokinetic mechanisms that can precipitate a drug interaction. She presented one of the projects she worked on at the 2022 PANWAT regional conference. The project investigates solubility as a mechanism of the natural-product drug interaction that was observed between green tea and raloxifene in healthy participants.
Recipient: Jessica Ray
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Montana
Dr. Ray was proud to receive this award and grateful to be recognized for the effort that she put into the clear and concise communication and presentation of her research. This award will help convey those efforts to future employers and funding agencies.
Dr. Ray's work is focused on determining the underlying cause(s) of sex disparities in the prevalence and severity of respiratory diseases. Specifically, her research investigates the influence of estrogen on macrophage function as an explanation for the increased sensitivity of female animals to respirable particles that elicit eosinophilic inflammation. This award was for work examining how estrogen modulates cholesterol metabolism in lung macrophages and how this process relates to sex-specific regulation of inflammatory signaling. The future goals for this project are to improve our understanding of the role that cholesterol plays in the inflammatory functions of lung macrophages, with an emphasis on sex-based differences in this process; the ultimate goal being to provide a potential explanation for the sex disparities observed in human respiratory diseases.
Recipient: Francesca Rossi
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Oregon State University
Ms. Rossi was so honored and thrilled to have received the PANWAT Student Award. Presenting at PANWAT was an amazing experience-one that gave her a chance to share her work, practice public speaking and connect with individuals from industry and academia. She shared it was wonderful to hear feedback on her presentation from those attending the conference. This award will help her continue to work on her project by helping cover labor costs. She is so grateful for this opportunity and this award.
Mycotoxins are fungal metabolites that are produced in the agricultural plants we grow, contaminating the food we eat and feed our livestock. Mycotoxigenic fungi can be potent in their degradation of the plant host in and of themselves, as mycotoxins follow with toxic side effects to mammalian consumers. Her honors college thesis, “Evaluation of Fusarium proliferatum Mycotoxin Profiles in Infected Garlic Cloves,” examines the specific mycotoxin profiles that accompany infection of F. proliferatum in order to provide more information as to the threat that this fungus poses in our food supply. In garlic, infection makes bulbs soften, develop brown-yellow lesions and appear brown and watery if cut open. This is harmful to the host plant, which is essentially rotting; the producer, who suffers economically; and the consumer who is at risk to the toxic effects of this fungus. Fusarium proliferatum produces the B series group of fumonisins which have been labeled by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as potential human carcinogens. In mammals, fumonisin toxins predominantly target the liver and kidneys where they can cause cancer; they can also lead to abnormalities in fetal neurodevelopment, appearing as functional or physical defects and, in severe cases, neural tube deformities. Fumonisin toxicity is of great concern in regions where human and animal diets may not be varied, resulting in high daily, chronic exposures. This project will evaluate the concentration of fumonisin mycotoxins in an array of F. proliferatum-infected garlic cloves via an LC-MS/MS method which she is validating for use in garlic. Determination of variability of fumonisin production and pathogenicity between isolates of F. proliferatum will inform management and prevention of garlic rot. Career wise, she is interested in staying in the realm of animal feed and mycotoxins but hopes to incorporate public education into her work. She plans to do this through the role of an Extension Agent for Oregon State University, where she can not only aid in research studies but also connect with the public and be on the ground when issues involving mycotoxins arise. Her goal in being an Extension Agent is to better connect the public with research in toxicology, making it more familiar and accessible. Extension agents are pillars of their community, but also have the responsibility to integrate the research being done at Oregon State University.
Recipient: Rakshit Tanna
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, MS
Institution/Affiliation: Washington State University
Mr. Tanna was honored and thrilled at the same time to receive the best oral presentation award. This award personally raised his confidence as a public speaker to better disseminate his research findings. The recognition helped Mr. Tanna talk to more people at the meeting and make connections. His research received greater visibility, which will eventually enhance its impact. This award will also strengthen Mr. Tanna's CV and will facilitate his future career in toxicology research.
Mr. Tanna's research is dedicated in identifying and predicting risks of adverse effects associated with co-consuming prescription drugs with botanical natural products. With this research he hopes to create awareness amongst other researchers, medical practitioners, and consumers to ensure safe use of these freely available products. The award Mr. Tanna won was for his research assessing the risk of co-consuming drugs with the opioid-like natural product kratom. This research is addressing the unfortunate deaths of several people using kratom with drugs of abuse, including opioids and benzodiazepines. Based on his in vitro and clinical studies, Mr. Tanna showed that kratom can lead to pharmacokinetic drug interactions, which can be deleterious in nature. He hopes that with this evidence the Drug Enforcement Administration and the US Food and Drug Administration can make an informed decision of appropriately regulating and enabling safe use of kratom.
Recipient: Hao Wang
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Washington
Dr. Wang was thrilled to know that his presentation was chosen as one of the best presentations in PANWAT 2022. This award will support him in attending the 2023 SOT Annual Meeting, and he can share his latest research results with the best toxicologists around the world.
Dr. Wang's research focuses on the role the gut microbiome plays in modulating the Cd neurotoxicity on learning and memory in mice. As a first attempt to investigate the role of the gut-brain axis in Cd neurotoxicity, he tested the hypothesis that Cd-induced gut dysbiosis precedes the onset of cognitive deficits. Dr. Wang found Cd exposure can induce significant changes in the gut microbiome before the onset of learning and memory deficits in mice. He found that Cd exposure induced significant changes in several short-chain fatty acids and bile acids in mice. These results suggest that Cd exposure induced significant gut dysbiosis before the onset of cognitive deficits in mice. In the future, Dr. Wang will try to identify the effects of specific microbiome and microbial metabolites in Cd neurotoxicity on learning and memory.
Recipient: Lindsay Wilson
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Oregon State University
Ms. Wilson was very excited and proud to receive this award at the recent annual meeting. Receiving this award is validation that her research is of interest to a wider audience and encourages her to embrace research challenges in the future.
Ms. Wilson's research utilizes the zebrafish model to interrogate mechanisms of toxicity of common environmental chemicals, primarily polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The overarching theme of her PhD research and the work she would like to continue post-graduation is predictive toxicology. The project Ms. Wilson presented for this award aims to assess concentration-response dynamics of gene expression profiles associated with the PAH, retene. She identified several genes which exhibited a concentration-response relationship and by modeling these relationships, she identified the most sensitive transcriptional responders and their benchmark concentrations. Ms. Wilson would like to use approaches like this to identify biomarkers of teratogenicity and advocate for the use of molecular markers in hazard assessment.
Recipient: Pavani Gonnabathula
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: NCTR-USFDA
Dr. Gonnabathula is honored and thankful to the BMSS for the recognition with this award, and it will definitely help her to do more research.
Dr. Gonnabathula's work mainly focused on developing Adult PBPK model and applying that to predict PK profiles in perinatal life stages using different modeling based technologies. Her current work focuses on developing adult paxlovid PBPK model and extrapolate to special populations.
Recipient: Xue Wu
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Florida
Ms. Wu was very encouraged to continue her work after receiving this award, which was based on her work on PBPK model, risk assessment, animal drug, and food safety.
Recipient: Jennae Whitted
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Trinity Washington University
Ms. Whitted was elated to receive this award and she is excited to attend the annual conference this upcoming year. This award will help her pursue her research as a graduate student by allowing her to pursue other various forms of computational biomedical research.
Ms. Whitted's research examined how phthalates, which are endocrine-disrupting chemicals, are associated with ovarian volume in midlife women, which is a clinical marker of ovarian reserve. She also considered if these associations differed by weight status since age 18. As phthalates are used to manufacture plastic products (like food contact materials) and personal care products/cosmetics (as fragrance stabilizers), exposure to phthalates is widespread. Importantly, women have higher exposer to phthalates compared to men. In her future work, Ms. Whitted hopes to take what she learned working with this epidemiologic study and begin to unravel the molecular mechanisms of various environmental chemicals that impact human health.
Recipient: Haley Moyer
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Texas A&M University
Ms. Moyer was very grateful to receive this award and is so appreciative of the Risk Assessment Specialty Section for choosing her. This will help her to continue her research at Texas A&M and to travel to conferences such as SOT where she can network with other researchers. Without being able to travel to these events, Ms. Moyer wouldn't have been able to make many of the connections that she has at the annual meetings that allow her to be more creative in her research and provide opportunities for professional development during her time at Texas A&M.
Ms. Moyer's research focuses on using New Approach Methods, specifically Organ-on-Chip technologies, to study barrier tissues. The goal of this work is to evaluate models which can hopefully be used to reduce the need for animal models. The work that she has for this award focuses on the Feto-Maternal interface. She is using an academic Organ-on-chip model developed by researchers at Texas A&M, and Human Fetal Membrane cells developed by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston to identify chemicals which may be able to cross the feto-maternal barrier and the resulting inflammatory cytokines which may be associated with pre-term birth outcomes.
Recipient: Christine Kim
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PharmD
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Dr. Kim was very thrilled to be selected as a recipient of this award. She immediately shared the wonderful news with her research advisor and thanked her for all her support and encouragement. This award will give Dr. Kim the opportunity to expand her career path and motivate her to continue to pursue her research in the field of renal toxicology.
This awarded project focuses on investigating urinary protein biomarkers of subclinical kidney injury to assess novel cisplatin-drug interaction in cancer patients. Cisplatin is recommended as a first-line therapy for solid tumors. However, the utility of cisplatin chemotherapy is limited in part by nephrotoxicity, which can be more pronounced with co-administration of antiemetic 5-HT3 antagonists to alleviate nausea and vomiting. Dr. Kim's results support clinical application of novel biomarkers that will help prevent cisplatin-induced kidney injury resulting from drug-drug interactions. In the future, she is interested in identifying additional novel biomarkers to study drug-induced kidney injury and hope to apply this knowledge to develop in vitro screening models.
Recipient: Lucy Martinez-Guerrero
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS, PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Arizona
Dr. Martinez-Guerrero was very pleased and grateful to be selected as the recipient of the Renal Toxicology Fellowship Award. She appreciates the recognition of the Mechanisms Specialty Section. This award encourages her to further pursue her research and motivates her for a long-term career as a researcher and mentor.
Dr. Martinez-Guerrero studies how diseases like nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) can cause altered secretion of drugs and toxicants for an increasing number of at-risk individuals. In these individuals, the levels of expression of the transporters involved in the handling of toxicants and or drugs are altered, influencing the process of reabsorption and secretion on the kidney. In this project, Dr. Martinez-Guerrero specifically worked with renal apical transporters validating her NASH mouse model; this will allow for clinical translatability of her data from future pharmacokinetics and disposition studies. These projects advance the field of mechanistic toxicology by addressing the mechanism behind the altered disposition of anionic drugs or toxins in NASH patients.
Recipient: Arthur Stem
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: AS, BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Mr. Stem found receipt of this award to be gratifying, encouraging, and motivating. He appreciates that there is interest in the project that he has devoted himself to and will endeavor to prove this interest warranted. This award will provide financial support that will allow Mr. Stem to focus on research and will hopefully bring recognition and attention to the public health crisis that is chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology (CKDu).
Mr. Stem's research focuses on mechanisms behind the initiation and progression of kidney disease, specifically chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology (CKDu). His work has provided new information on how this disease follows similar patterns to more well known kidney disease pathology, particularly regarding cellular energy production and metabolic changes. He hopes to expand his technical capabilities and improve his understanding of the many skills required to ensure success of academic research. Mr. Stem's eventual goal is lead a research lab.
Recipient: Arthur Stem
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: AS, BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Mr. Stem is incredibly humbled and grateful for the recognition of his work. This award helps validate the countless hours of hard work and dedication that he has poured into his research, and will provide him with additional resources and opportunities to pursue his research further.
Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown etiology (CKDu) is a devastating nephrological disorder that has emerged in agricultural communities around the world. Unfortunately, limited mechanistic understanding prevents development of effective treatments. Mr. Stem's research investigates silica’s mechanisms of toxicity and role in kidney disease for the purpose of developing functional therapeutics and preventative techniques to mitigate the disastrous effects of CKDu.
Recipient: Ishita Choudhary
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: DVM
Institution/Affiliation: Louisiana State University
Dr. Choudhary was pleased and honored to receive the prestigious Comparative Toxicology, Pathology, and Veterinary Specialty Section Roger O. McClellan Student Award. This award will help her attend the SOT conference by defraying the costs associated with the travel and lodging. Getting this award motivates her further and will help her carve a niche for herself as a budding toxicologist.
Dr. Choudhary’s research interests include investigating the pathological basis of ozone- and allergens-induced lung injury and identifying key molecular targets or signaling pathways that can be targeted in the future. For the initial years of her PhD, Dr. Choudhary investigated the molecular mechanisms and pathological manifestations of ozone-mediated lung injury. She also conducted transcriptomics and proteomics studies to dig deeper into the ozone-mediated alterations at the gene and protein levels. She has received Comparative Toxicology, Pathology, and Veterinary Specialty Section Roger O. McClellan Student Award for the research work that she is doing toward her dissertation. Her dissertation research work is focused on investigating the cell-type specific role of IL4Rα signaling in allergic asthma, a disease affecting millions in the United States and worldwide. IL-4 and IL-13 are key Th2 cytokines known to play a crucial role in allergic asthma pathogenesis via their common receptor, i.e., interleukin 4 receptor alpha (IL4Rα). Mice with germline deficiency of IL4Rα are completely protected against allergic asthma. Therapeutic strategies against IL4Rα and its ligands are currently under clinical trials for the management of allergic asthma. While the responses to these therapies are promising, perhaps due to the incomplete inhibition of IL4Rα signaling in cell types that undergo continual recruitment, complete protection against allergic asthma is yet to accomplish. Currently, the cell type-specific roles of IL4Rα-mediated signaling in allergic asthma have remained unclear. Identifying key cell types that employ IL4Rα-mediated signaling to exhibit pathological manifestations of allergic asthma may aid in developing more effective cell-specific therapies for allergic asthma.
Recipient: Zakiyah Henry
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University The State University of New Jersey- New Brunswick
Ms. Henry was thrilled to discover that she is a recipient of the Ronald G. Thurman Student Travel Award. She is grateful to use these funds to support her travel to the SOT Meeting where she will present her research, network with individuals in the field, and hopefully gain insight and feedback from others regarding her research.
Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is an increasingly common chronic condition that has harmful effects on the liver. Furthermore, NASH-induced scarring of the liver is the leading indication for liver transplantation in the US. There are no FDA-approved drugs for NASH treatment, however, the Farnesoid X Receptor (FXR) has proven to be beneficial in the treatment of this disorder. Ms. Henry is specifically interested in how FXR functions in a tissue and cell-specific manner to reduce adverse effects of drugs for NASH patients, and to support the development of novel and safe therapeutics for the treatment of NASH. She is using various mouse models to discover underlying mechanisms contributing to FXR functionality differences between various cell and tissue types. In the future, she is hopeful that she will identify altered genes and pathways as a result of FXR tissue modifications that can be targeted for drug development.
Recipient: Joanna Woo
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Ms. Woo was ecstatic to hear she had won this award. This is her first time winning an award using her research and research prospects. She is grateful to the Society of Toxicology for seeing her work and recognizing it as valuable to mechanistic toxicology. As someone who wants to pursue this field of study in her future career, Ms. Woo finds that this is an incredible opportunity to build her CV and take a step towards integrating more profoundly into the SOT. She plans on using this award to further explore translational techniques in mechanistic toxicology and use it as an anchor for mentorship opportunities for younger generations of scientists. She also plans to further develop her repertoire and enhance her skills in her research and educational program development.
Ms. Woo's research journey has tackled identifying mechanistic links between obesity and asthma, specifically in monitoring messengers responsible for modulating airway contraction in obesity-associated asthma. Through this project, she has utilized translational models like primary human airway smooth muscle cells and human precision-cut lung slices that can directly measure contraction while taking the heterogeneity of diverse human populations into account. Her research for SOT 2023 involves the utilization of a channel on human airway smooth muscle cells that has not been explored functionally. She found that when this channel is blocked, this lessens the amount the cells can contract and migrate while reducing the mechanisms that cause contraction. This channel is increased in the presence of messengers upregulated with obesity and can hopefully be further explored for obstructive lung diseases like asthma.
Recipient: Aiman Abzhanova
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: UNC at Chapel Hill
Upon receiving the notification of winning the award, Ms. Abzhanova felt honored and excited. She also felt encouraged to continue her research on wood smoke-induced toxicity.
Ms. Abzhanova's research focuses on the harmful effects of wood smoke on human health, specifically in the respiratory system. She built a unique system to study how freshly generated wood smoke affects 3D organotypic human airway epithelial cells. Cells are exposed to wood smoke in a controlled environment, and Ms. Abzhanova monitored their responses in real time. She found that exposure to wood smoke can lead to a disturbance of redox balance, specifically oxidation of cytosolic glutathione. She also found that the effects of wood smoke on cells were not caused by carbon monoxide exposure. The study is ongoing and will provide mechanistic insight into the adverse health effects of wood smoke. Ms. Abzhanova is grateful to the Society of Toxicology for the recognition of her work.
Recipient: Kian Afsharian
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Toronto
Mr. Afsharian is very honored to be the recipient of this award. This will be his first year attending an SOT meeting, and as such he has had limited interactions with other Mechanisms Specialty Section members. Despite that, the prestige of this Section is evident from the accomplishments of its members, and its history of representing scientific excellence in mechanistic toxicology for ~40 years. Awards such as these not only enable Mr. Afsharian to attend conferences relevant to his research such as the SOT Annual Meeting, but also reduces the impact to his lab’s tightly budgeted monetary resources. As such, this award indirectly funds experiments that build his thesis and contribute to scientific progress.
Mr. Afsharian's graduate work seeks to elucidate the precise molecular mechanisms by which reactive oxygen species (ROS) and oxidative DNA damage [i.e. 8-oxoguanine (8-oxoG) and DNA strand breaks] in the developing mouse brain leads to neuronal dysmorphology and postnatal behavioral deficits relevant to neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). He hypothesizes that this mechanism involves the dysregulation of epigenetic pathways such as DNA methylation and histone modifications, and thus epigenetic marks [e.g. 5-methylcytosine (5-mC)] that control the expression of developmentally critical genes. He is exploring this mechanism in a mouse model deficient in the breast cancer 1 gene (Brca1), a canonical tumor suppressor gene whose protein product regulates several DNA repair pathways, including those that specifically repair oxidative DNA damage. Mr. Afsharian found that the expression of genes encoding epigenetic regulators and neurodevelopmental proteins, are dysregulated with Brca1-genotype and/or in utero EtOH exposure in mouse fetal brains. He also found that BRCA1-deficient, EtOH-exposed brains had increased 8-oxoG levels, which were correlated with changes in the methylation levels of promoter regions upstream genes that were found to be dysregulated. His next steps are to assess the efficacy of epigenetic probes administered in vivo. If the BRCA1- and EtOH-dependent alterations in both DNA methylation and the associated postnatal behavioural disorders can be mitigated with pharmacological inhibitors of 5-mC formation, removal and/or recognition, this would directly implicate DNA methylation in the mechanism of ASD- and FASD-like NDDs. These findings will enhance our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying NDDs and could support the development of a new class of therapeutics seeking to reverse these deficits in humans.
Recipient: Dipro Bose
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MTech
Institution/Affiliation: University of California Irvine
Mr. Bose is honored to be receiving this prestigious Mechanisms Sheldon D. Murphy Student and Postdoctoral Endowment Award. He is grateful to the awards committee of Mechanisms Specialty Section and Society of Toxicology for selecting his research work for this award. Mr. Bose would also like to thank his PhD mentor, Dr. Saurabh Chatterjee, Professor in University of California, Irvine and a well-recognized scientist in the field of toxicology, for his immense support and guidance in Mr. Bose's doctoral study research work.
Mr. Bose is currently working on Gulf War Illness (GWI), which is a chronic multisymptomatic condition that persists among the aging Gulf War Veterans even 30 years after the war. It is interesting to note that though significant research has been done, the pathophysiology of GWI remains elusive. Mr. Bose is investigating the role of Gulf War chemicals in causing neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration through mechanistic studies. He would continue to identify therapeutic targets through his research that could ameliorate the neurological conditions in GWI.
Recipient: Jaclynn Meshanni
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Ms. Meshanni is absolutely honored to receive this award. She is always inspired and excited to be a part of the collaborative and scientific environment that the Mechanism Specialty Section fosters. This award will not only help Ms. Meshanni travel for the national meeting, but it will give her the opportunity to continue to learn and apply the mechanistic science that Mechanisms Specialty Section adds the the SOT community.
Ms. Meshanni studied the role of FXR, a nuclear receptor, in chemical warfare induced-pulmonary toxicity. Her current research is specifically evaluating the role of FXR in mediating Nitrogen mustard-induced dysregulation of macrophage lipid handling and its impact on the development of pulmonary fibrosis and emphysema. Her future goal is to evaluate the impact of cholesterol handling disruption on macrophage phenotype and to translate her overall findings to human.
Recipient: Zainab Riaz
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS, BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Georgia
Ms. Riaz is very pleased and honored to be nominated for the Mechanisms Sheldon D. Murphy Student and Postdoctoral Endowment Award. It feels great to have her research project and abstract recognized as a contribution to mechanistic research in toxicology. She is currently developing a pesticide-induced human pluripotent stem cell derived midbrain dopaminergic neuron model to study the mechanisms of nuclear pore complex dysfunction. This endowment award will be used toward the expense of reagents and material for this aspect of the project.
Ms. Riaz's research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of neurotoxic stress-induced neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease. In the future, she aims to continue conducting mechanistic research in the field of aging and neurodegeneration. She won this award for her research on the structural and functional changes in the nuclear pore complex in neurotoxic pesticide induced mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress models of Parkinson’s disease.
Recipient: Brittany Rickard
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Ms. Rickard is extremely grateful to have won this award. This award will help her share her latest findings at SOT with other experts in the field. Attending SOT with the help of this award will also allow her to meet and discuss our findings with potential collaborations, which could lead to groundbreaking findings on PFAS and chemotherapy response.
Ms. Rickard's current research focuses on the contribution of environmental contaminant exposure to chemotherapy resistance in ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynecologic malignancy with a mortality rate of ~65%, and a major contributing factor is chemotherapy resistance. PFAS are known disruptors of female reproduction, thus Ms. Rickard evaluated whether PFAS exposure contributed to chemotherapy resistance in ovarian cancer. Our findings thus far show that select PFAS relevant to North Carolina water supplies induce resistance to platinum-based chemotherapy, the standard of care in ovarian cancer, potentially by enhancing mitochondrial function. Specifically, she found that PFAS increase mitochondrial membrane potential and alter oxidative stress profiles, both suggesting that mitochondrial mechanisms may underlie PFAS-induced chemotherapy resistance.
Recipient: Lauren Thompson
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Ms. Thompson was thrilled to learn that she was chosen to receive the Sheldon D. Murphy Student and Postdoctoral Endowment Award. It is an honor to be recognized by the SOT Mechanisms Specialty Section for her work on cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury (AKI). She plans to use the award funds to continue her training in toxicology. She hopes to use the funds to further her training in 3D cell culture models, specifically kidney tubules, in order to better understand drug-induced nephrotoxicity.
Ms. Thompson's research interests revolve around increasing the effectiveness, precision, and safety of drug therapies at the level of individual patients by applying pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling and pharmacogenomic precision medicine strategies. To this end, her PhD dissertation focuses on risk factors and mitigation strategies for cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity. As part of her dissertation work, Ms. Thompson is conducting the first prospective evaluation of AKI risk in patients randomized to different 5-HT3 antagonist anti-nausea drugs (ondansetron, granisetron, palonosetron). Cisplatin, the most used platinum-based chemotherapeutic, is used to treat many types of cancer. Cisplatin causes acute kidney injury (AKI) in up to one-third of patients and most patients experience at least small, but permanent declines in kidney function. Previous work has shown that ondansetron, a commonly co-prescribed 5-HT3 antagonist anti-nausea drug, may enhance the risk of AKI by inhibiting the transport of cisplatin out of the kidneys. Ms. Thompson's results demonstrate that co-administration of ondansetron with cisplatin increased systemic exposure to platinum and decreased kidney function. The overall goal of this work is to find the best 5-HT3 antagonist anti-nausea drug to co-administer to cisplatin patients in order to mitigate the risk of nephrotoxicity. To prevent an increased risk of AKI, Ms. Thompson anticipates that her results will suggest changing the standard of care for cisplatin-treated patients in order to favor the use of granisetron or palonosetron over ondansetron.
Recipient: Elvis Ticiani
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS, PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Illinois at Chicago - UIC
Dr. Ticiani was thrilled and humbled to be among the recipients of the Mechanisms Sheldon D. Murphy Student and Postdoctoral Endowment Award. He feels honored to have received this award. The Mechanisms Sheldon D. Murphy Student and Postdoctoral Endowment Award will aid in funding his travel to meetings that offer significant educational opportunities in the field of mechanisms in toxicology, such as Future Tox, and will give him the opportunity to expand his career path by presenting these findings and allowing him to network with peers and experts in his field of study.
Dr. Ticiani's current research demonstrated for the first time that a mixture of EGFR-disrupting chemicals can affect mitochondrial remodeling in placenta cells by reducing mitochondrial network size, resulting in altered cellular bioenergetics and reducing the capacity of human cytotrophoblast cells to generate energy. Considering that changes in mitochondrial biogenesis and morphology have been reported during common pregnancy stressors and disorders, including maternal diabetes, obesity, pre-eclampsia, calorie restriction and protein deprivation, his findings suggest that the exposure to EGFR-disrupting chemicals during pregnancy can be harmful for the normal fetal and placenta development. Dr. Ticiani's future studies should identify which chemicals are the main driver of the disrupting in the cellular bioenergetics and investigate ultimately impact in the placental cell function.
Recipient: Madeline Tompach
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, MS
Institution/Affiliation: UMass Amherst
Ms. Tompach was honored and excited to be selected for the Sheldon D. Murphy Student Endowment Award. This award will help to fund her trip to the 2023 SOT Annual Meeting where she looks forward to sharing and getting feedback on her research.
Ms. Tompach's research investigates how the persistent man-made chemical perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, PFOS, affects the development and function of the pancreas. Specifically, the work she will be presenting at the 2023 Annual Meeting focuses on how PFOS impacts the function of the exocrine pancreas, which is responsible for producing the digestive enzymes that breakdown nutrients, aiding in proper nutrient absorption. In the future, she hopes to use the skills she has gained through her current work to pursue a position in industry working in research and development.
Recipient: Jephte Akakpo
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: University of Kansas Medical Center
Dr. Akakpo was happy to receive this award.
Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is a prominent health concern as well as a major challenge for drug development worldwide. One of the most common causes of DILI in the western world is acetaminophen (APAP) overdose. In addition to liver injury, patients with APAP overdose also develop acute kidney injury, which is a syndrome that has progressively been recognized as a major cause of worsening patient prognosis after toxic APAP ingestion. Thus, Dr. Akakpo's current research focuses on conducting translational studies to decipher the unclear renal mechanisms of injury after an APAP overdose. This work may reveal new biological targets exploitable in novel drug development to prevent renal complications after APAP overdose.
Recipient: Olatunbosun Arowolo
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, MS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Mr. Arowolo is sincerely honored to have been selected as the recipient of the Toxicologist of African Origin TAO Student Travel Awards for the year 2023. He is writing to say thank you for the generous financial support provided to support his travel to the SOT 2023 Annual Meeting to present his research. The gift from this travel award will help ease his financial burden and also improve his resume as he prepares for his future career.
Mr. Arowolo is a 3rd year PhD student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Since the start of his PhD program in Fall 2020, he has been able to publish three first author articles in addition to his other toxicology research articles. His research includes mechanistic, reproduction, and computational toxicology. The research include the discovery of a new mechanism of male reproductive toxicity and specifically on the mechanisms that convert paternal circulation cues into their sperm epigenome. Molecular mechanisms of chemical exposure and its role in emerging disease prognosis using computational skills. This area of research area also exposed Mr. Arowolo to various bioinformatics experience. In the light of this award, he is pleased to write about the research abstract submitted for this award. The article was titled " Towards Whole Health Toxicology: In Silico Prediction of Diseases Sensitive to Multi-Chemical Exposures." Emerging evidences showed that there is currently a global surge in the numbers of people suffering from multi-morbidity. Today, no approaches are available to predict in an unbiased way sensitivities of different disease states and their combinations to multi-chemical exposures across the exposome. Based on this understanding, Mr. Arowolo proposed an inductive in silico workflow where sensitivities of genes to chemical exposures are identified based on the overlap of existing genomic datasets, and data on sensitivities of individual genes is further used to sequentially derive predictions on sensitivities of molecular pathways, disease states, and groups of disease states (syndromes). His analysis suggests that leading neoplasms with environmental etiology include prostatic, breast, stomach, lung, colorectal neoplasms, and hepatocellular carcinoma. The importance of these findings is determined by the fact that these neoplasms are the six leading types of cancer with the highest incidence worldwide. Among non-neoplastic conditions, the top-ranking predicted diseases represent the major public health problems, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, autistic disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, hypertension, heart failure, brain and myocardial ischemia, and myocardial infarction. Along with cancer, four of these conditions (heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes) are the major causes of death in the USA and the world.
Mr. Arowolo's short goal is to complete his PhD program, carry out more meaningful research, publish research manuscripts, and share his work with other researchers all over the world through conferences. His long term goal is to start his postdoctoral fellowship after his PhD program. During his postdoctoral program, he intends to apply for faculty positions and grants, as he hopes to mentor the next generation of scientists.
Recipient: Mohamed Ghorab
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: USEPA
Dr. Ghorab is honored to have received this recognition for his contributions to the field of environmental toxicology. The award is a great honor and validation of his work and will provide him with additional resources and opportunities to pursue his research goals and contribute to the protection of human health and the environment.
Dr. Ghorab's research focuses on understanding how toxic substances affect the environment and wildlife, including the assessment of potential risks to human health and the environment. He won this award for his work on leadership in toxicology and related to the development of innovative approaches for the risk assessment of pesticides, which are everyday chemicals that persist in the environment and can accumulate in the food chain. He has also recently focused on the New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) for the assessment of pesticide and inert ingredient risks. In the future, Dr. Ghorab aims to continue this work and expand his research to include the assessment of other classes of toxic substances. He also hopes to collaborate with other researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders to ensure that his findings have a real-world impact and contribute to the development of effective environmental regulations.
Recipient: Merna Maher Fekry Gress
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BDS
Institution/Affiliation: NYU College of Dentistry
Ms. Gress is beyond thrilled and humbled to have been selected for the Toxicologists of African Origin Student Travel Awards to attend the Society of Toxicology Annual Meeting. As a Fulbright student from Africa, this recognition is particularly special and reinforces her passion for research and commitment to advancing the field of toxicology. Her research focuses on investigating the effects of e-cigarettes on dual smokers and their potential link to oral cancer, and she is eager to present her findings at this prestigious conference. Receiving this award highlights the significance of Ms. Gress' work and its potential to make a meaningful impact in the field. The resources provided by the TAO travel award will allow her to participate fully in the conference and engage in discussions, as well as receive valuable feedback on her research. Additionally, it will allow her to expand the scope of her study and explore new avenues of investigation. Attending the Society of Toxicology Annual Meeting will also provide Ms. Gress with the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with leading experts in the field, which will greatly contribute to the advancement of her research and her personal and professional growth. As a Fulbright student, she is dedicated to fostering international collaboration and exchanging knowledge, and this award will greatly aid in achieving these goals. The award will also serve as a platform to showcase her research to a wider audience and bring attention to the critical issues that her study addresses, ultimately contributing to the advancement of the field and improving public health outcomes. She is deeply appreciative of the recognition and support provided by the Toxicologists of African Origin and is eager to make the most of this incredible opportunity.
In Ms. Gress' study, she looked at the potential effects of using electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) on oral health, specifically in individuals who also smoke conventional cigarettes. While e-cigarettes have been marketed as a safer alternative to conventional cigarettes, previous research has found that the liquids and aerosols produced by e-cigarettes contain potentially harmful chemicals. To conduct her study, Ms. Gress exposed mice to e-cigarette aerosols for several hours a day, over a period of several months. She also exposed some of the mice to a chemical found in tobacco products that is known to cause cancer. She then looked for any signs of mutagenesis, which is a process that can lead to cancer, in the mice's tongues and other oral tissues. The results of her study so far suggest that exposure to e-cigarette aerosols alone may not be mutagenic, but co-exposure to e-cigarette aerosols and the tobacco-related chemical increases the risk of mutagenesis in the tongues of smokers. These outcomes have important implications for public health policy and interventions related to e-cigarette use, particularly in African countries where the rate of tobacco use is alarmingly high, according to the World Health Organization's Africa regional office. This study is supported by the National Institutes of Health and Ms. Gress' goal is to gain a better understanding of the potential effects of e-cigarettes on oral health and to ultimately inform public health policy and practice.
Recipient: Demetrius McAtee
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: LSU School of Veterinary Medicine
Mr. McAtee's reaction upon receiving this award was complete shock, and he actually forwarded the email to his major advisor expressing excitement upon his initial notification. Matriculating through an HBCU, one becomes aware of the distinction of availability of resources and opportunities compared to that of other institutions. Since the beginning of graduate school he has worked long hours and at times one begins to lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel, and receiving awards such as this one rekindles that spark of motivation and validates the hard work that is serving a greater purpose. Mr. McAtee believes that his experience at the SOT Annual Meeting will be invaluable and his research career will be enriched due to the networking and vast amount of opportunities and resources that he will become exposed to as a direct result of his attendance, which would not be possible without the assistance this travel award provides.
Mr. McAtee's research work entails using the zebrafish model organism to determine if any behavioral or developmental abnormalities arise due to early exposure of ubiquitous environmental contaminants. His future goals are for his current research to bring a more clear understanding of the underlying neurological mechanisms or molecular events driving these behavioral or developmental abnormalities as a result of chemical exposure leading to possible novel theranostic appilcations being developed .
Recipient: Bright Obeng
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Maine
Mr. Obeng was excited to receive this award. This award will help his research gain exposure because it will facilitate his travel to the forthcoming SOT conference, where he intends to present his research to the scientific community.
Mr. Obeng's research focuses on how cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC), a widely used antimicrobial in consumer products, immune mast function and the biochemical mechanisms underlying CPC’s inhibition of immune mast cell function. Unfortunately, despite its widespread usage, data are scarce on CPC’s eukaryotic toxicology. He hopes to contribute to filling the knowledge gap to aid regulators in determining the proper use of such a high-dose chemical.
Recipient: Anita Waye
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Illinois at Chicago
Ms. Waye was very excited when she received this award. She plans to use these funds towards her SOT travel.
Ms. Waye has identified a group of chemicals that individually affect EGFR which is a receptor that mediates numerous placenta cell functions. She is testing how these chemicals both individually and combined as a mixture affect placenta cell functions and long term maternal health. Her future goals include being involved in research on the effects of environmental exposures on pregnant women living in marginalized communities.
Recipient: Aggie Williams
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Louisville
Ms. Williams us so grateful for this award. It was an absolute honor to receive this research award from the Toxicologists of African Origin Special Interest Group. This award is not only a symbol for academic excellence, but also a way for her to connect with an amazing community. The travel award has encouraged Ms. Williams to attend conferences like SOT that would have otherwise been a financial burden and reassured her determination in her research project. She is looking forward to being a part of this great community!
Ms. Williams' work focuses on particulate hexavalent Cr(VI) compounds because they are most potent. Cr(VI) is a metal known to cause cancer, but its mechanism of action is currently unknown. Her project investigates RAD51 and its paralogs, key proteins within a DNA repair pathway as a novel mechanism of Cr(VI) toxicity. Her future goal is to become an independent researcher in the field of metals, with a focus on lung cancer and mechanisms that can be applied to many other cancers. The research for which Ms. Williams won this award is looking at how Cr(VI) alters RAD51 complexes in humans and comparing outcomes to alligators for species differences.
Recipient: Ashley Adamson
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Alabama at Birmingham
Ms. Thompson was very excited and proud to have received this award. It will help her attend SOT 2023, which will jumpstart her professional connections and lead to the prospect of collaborations and relationships that will further her research.
Ms. Thompson's research focuses on understanding what role environmental toxicants play in driving Parkinson’s Disease pathology towards more cognitive phenotypes. She is currently working on elucidating the contribution of cellular senescence in driving neuroinflammation as a mechanism for Parkinson's neurodegeneration. Her ultimate goal is to understand how environmental exposures influence Parkinsonian phenotypes such as Parkinson’s Disease, Dementia with Lewy Bodies, and Parkinson’s Disease Dementia.
Recipient: Kian Afsharian
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Toronto
Mr. Afsharian is thrilled and grateful to be the recipient of this award. Through his interactions with senior and trainee members of the Neurotoxicology Specialty Section, he has gained an appreciation for their rigorous approach to research and their passion for neurotoxicology. Receiving this award has provided him motivation and encouragement to continue exploring his research hypothesis, and to disseminate his findings in future meetings.
Currently, no studies have attempted to investigate the mechanisms by which enhanced in utero oxidative DNA damage affects gene expression in the developing brain, and if these mechanisms directly influence a functional outcome such as neuronal function or postnatal behaviour. Mr. Afsharian describes in his abstract that BRCA1-deficiency or in utero EtOH-exposure increases 8-oxoG in the fetal brain, leading to DNA methylation alterations in promoters that regulate gene expression. Genes that he has shown are epigenetically and transcriptionally dysregulated by 8-oxoG include those with established neurodevelopmental relevance. Ongoing studies are assessing behavioural outcomes relevant to NDDs in similarly exposed mice to establish a causative link between 8-oxoG-dependent epigenetic modifications and NDD pathogenesis. These findings will enhance scientists' understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying NDDs and could support the development of a new class of epigenetic therapeutics seeking to reverse these disorders in humans.
Recipient: Peter Andrew
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of California Davis
Mr. Andrew was surprised and honored to hear he was receiving this award. This particular project lays the foundation for further advancement of clinically translatable biomarkers relevant to epilepsy. He is glad that the Neurotoxicology Specialty Section recognizes the importance of this research. Receipt of this award serves as confirmation that other experts in the field appreciate the gravity of his findings, and encourages his group to continue pushing forward with this line of investigation.
Mr. Andrew's group studies brain damage that occurs after prolonged seizures. He uses a number of techniques to evaluate both the extent of damage - like what cells are impacted at what time points, as well as how such seizures can influence neurological function down the line. His focus is identifying potential therapeutic strategies to limit adverse outcomes associated with prolonged seizure activity. In this particular study, Mr. Andrew tracked changes in brain electrical activity after a seizure, with the ultimate goal of identifying electrical shifts that are associated with long-term neurological consequences, like cognitive and behavioral deficits or the development of epilepsy. He laid the groundwork for the advancement of clinically relevant biomarkers of chronic impairment after a seizure, meaning he hopes to use this information to predict long-term outcomes. Such information would improve his ability to identify and treat populations that are susceptible to chronic neurological impairments.
Recipient: Dipro Bose
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MTech
Institution/Affiliation: University of California Irvine
Mr. Bose is honored and delighted to have received the prestigious Toshio Narahashi Neurotoxicology Trainee Conference Endowment Award. He would like to thank the awards committee of Neurotoxicology Specialty Section and Society of Toxicology for selecting his research work. He would also like to thank his PhD mentor, Dr. Saurabh Chatterjee, Professor at University of California Irvine and a well recognized scientist in the field of Toxicology for his guidance and support in Mr. Bose's doctoral study research work.
Mr. Bose is currently working Gulf War Illness (GWI) which is a chronic multisymptomatic condition that continue to persist among the aging Gulf War Veterans even 30 years after the war. It is interesting to note that though significant research has been done, the pathophysiology of GWI remains elusive. Mr. Bose is studying the role of the environmental chemicals that Veterans were exposed in the war, in causing neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration through mechanistic studies.
Recipient: Meghan Bucher
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: Columbia University
Dr. Bucher was incredibly grateful to receive this award and see that her peers in the neurotoxicology community appreciate the work that she is doing.
Dr. Bucher studies environmental and pharmacological regulators of vesicular dopamine dynamics to understand the pathogenic mechanisms of neurological disease development, and to identify novel pharmacotherapeutic interventions. The research she presented on at SOT was detailing the development of two assays to probe intracellular dopamine dynamics for screening of environmental and pharmacological compounds.
Recipient: Sebastian Gutsfeld
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research UFZ
Mr. Gutsfeld felt extremely delighted and honored to learn that he received the Toshio Narahashi Neurotoxicology Fellowship Award. Due to the difference in time zones, he received notification of the award late at night. It was the first thing he read in the morning and it made his whole day. Mr. Gutsfeld felt highly appreciative that the years of work, including many technical hurdles, that went into this project, were recognized by experts in the field of neurotoxicology. This award motivates him to continue his line of research and strengthens the impression that his research is on the right track to contribute meaningful knowledge to the field.
Mr. Gutsfeld's work is focused on chemicals in the environment and how exposure to these chemicals affects neurodevelopment in zebrafish. He is especially interested in Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS), as they are widely used industrial chemicals and some are resistant to degradation and detected in humans and environmental samples worldwide. The developing zebrafish provides an excellent tool to bridge the large gap between in vitro new approach methods (NAMs) for the detection of developmental neurotoxicity and in vivo studies in rodents. Early life stage zebrafish develop rapidly and share high genetic homology with humans. It is therefore assumed that a wide range of molecular mechanisms by which environmental chemical exposure causes toxic responses in humans can also be studied in early life stage zebrafish. Mr. Gutsfeld's work investigates potential molecular mechanisms by which a certain class of PFAS disrupt neurodevelopment in early life stage zebrafish. Previous work has shown that exposure to these chemicals cause hyperactivity in an automated behavior test that we use as a functional readout of neurodevelopment. The underlying molecular mechanisms by which these structurally similar PFAS cause hyperactivity are unknown. He hypothesized that CRISPR/Cas9-based gene editing could be used to identify causal links between PFAS exposure and hyperactivity. His work identified multiple, distinct hyperactivity effects in zebrafish exposed to structurally similar PFAS and showed that one of them, called visual startle response hyperactivity, is mediated by a gene called ppard. This gene is conserved in humans. Therefore, this work builds confidence in using automated zebrafish behavior tests to identify widely occurring environmental chemicals that harbor the potential to cause neurotoxicity in humans.
Recipient: Neda Ilieva
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: University of Alabama at Birmingham
Ms. Ilieva felt extremely grateful, that the work that she had put into her presentation as well as her ability to relay the impact of the research she has been working so hard for had paid off. This award will be extremely helpful, as she could potentially use it for offsetting some of the costs incurred from travel to the SOT Annual Meeting, as well as to support her various research activities.
Ms. Ilieva's work focuses on understanding the mechanisms behind how common environmental chemicals like trichloroethylene (TCE) affect vulnerable brain cells and cause disease through their interactions with human genes. Her future goals include trying to shine a light on the importance of the cell's recycling system (autophagy) in maintaining regular function in the cell, resiliency, and coping with stress from environmental exposures. The current research that she has done has specifically focused on how TCE interacts with the most common risk gene for Parkinson's disease, Leucine Rich Repeat Kinase 2 (LRRK2) and how they could act through similar ways. Ms. Ilieva has demonstrated that blocking this common mechanism can offset the damage caused by exposure to environmental chemicals, and that it could protect these vulnerable brain cells in cell culture and in animals, possibly through allowing this recycling system (autophagy) to recover and turn over an important organelle, the mitochondria. While scientists know the mitochondira as the powerhouse of the cell, it is also the largest producer of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the cell. This turnover mechanism seems to be impacted by the activity of this LRRK2 kinase, and Ms. Ilieva believes that by blocking the kinase, recovering this activity, and allowing proper turnover of the mitochondria, she can modify disease progression.
Recipient: Luke Liu
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS, MD
Institution/Affiliation: Purdue University
Dr. Liu was very excited because the Neurotoxicology Specialty Section is one of the largest and most historic specialty sections; hence, standing out from many other competitive peer students means a lot. This award allows him to buy enough cold-brew coffee, which will keep him even more energetic, motivated, and enthusiastic to study the choroid plexus.
Dr. Liu studied the choroid plexus (CP), the tissue located in brain ventricles producing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and constituting the blood-CSF barrier. His research focuses on the secretion of signaling molecules by CP and how this secretion modulates the adult neurogenesis in the subventricular zone (SVZ) to the olfactory bulb (OB) for normal olfactory function. His research to present in the 2023 SOT meeting demonstrated that CP-secreted small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) play a critical role in determining newborn neuron supply to the OB from the SVZ, and Mn exposure disrupted this sEV secretion by CP thus compromising the neurogenesis. In the future, Dr. Liu hopes to unravel more toxicological mechanisms by which the toxicant-accumulating CP affects neighboring or distant brain regions through CSF secretion.
Recipient: Isha Mhatre-Winters
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS, PhD
Institution/Affiliation: Florida International University
Dr. Mhatre-Winters is very honored and thankful to the Society of Toxicology for recognizing this manuscript and her team’s work. Recognition from this prestigious award underscores the importance of her research and has encouraged her to pursue her career goal as an academic researcher in neurotoxicology.
Dr. Mhatre-Winters' research focuses on understanding the gene-by-environment interactions in Alzheimer’s disease. Although substantial research efforts are directed toward patient diagnosis, there remains a lack of understanding of the disease pathogenesis, particularly at the individual level. To provide a more personalized therapeutic option for patients, understanding the converging pathways of disease would greatly aid in better understanding and allow patients to receive drugs with a specific mode of action. The manuscript recognized for this award reports novel evidence indicating the effects of organochlorine pesticide DDT on the amyloid pathway in Alzheimer’s pathology. This collaborative effort led to translational studies conducted in three overarching systems: cell culture, Drosophila melanogaster fly strains, and AD transgenic mice. Dr. Mhatre-Winters' future work will focus on elucidating the mechanistic and genetic links of DDT in the progression of AD pathology.
Recipient: Savannah Rocha
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS, PhD
Institution/Affiliation: Colorado State University
Upon receiving this award, Dr. Rocha was incredibly grateful and humbled knowing that it was the Toshio Narahashi Award. It brought her joy to know that the research that she has conducted has the capacity to make an impact in not only the field of toxicology, but has the potential to add to the overarching field of Parkinson's research.
The work that Dr. Rocha conducts focuses on how cellular interactions in the brain change upon viral, bacterial, or toxin exposure and how those changes result in neurodegenerative disease such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. The research that was conducted and presented for this award examined how the modulation of microglial inflammatory pathway (IKK2/Nf-kB) inhibition altered progression of pathology in a dual-hit model of Parkinson's disease. The dual-hit exposure model conduced in this study included juvenile exposure to the heavy metal manganese followed by exposure to the environmental toxicant and pesticide rotenone. This research provided insights into the intricate relationships between astrocytes, microglia, and neurons in the pathological progression of neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration, where, interestingly, inflammatory processes of microglia in multiple exposure modeling revealed transcriptional level adaptation and modification that was primed to the primary insult resulting in altered responses to the secondary insult.
Recipient: Lauren Aleksunes
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PharmD, PhD, DABT
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Dr. Aleksunes has been awarded the 2023 SOT Undergraduate Educator Award to recognize her teaching and mentoring of undergraduate pharmacy students and her significant contributions to the development of new curricula and instructional approaches to attract, educate, and retain students in the field.
Dr. Aleksunes received PharmD and PhD degrees in pharmacology and toxicology from the University of Connecticut. She joined the faculty of Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy in 2009 and currently serves as Professor. Also, Dr. Aleksunes is concurrently the Director of the Joint Graduate Program in Toxicology at the university.
The majority of her teaching is to undergraduate students in their junior and senior year. The Rutgers PharmD program is one of the few programs in the country where most students are accepted into the school while enrolled in high school. As a member of the Pharmacology and Toxicology Department, Dr. Aleksunes teaches in several core courses, including Physiology, Pathophysiology, Pharmacology and Pharmacogenetics, and various Pharmacotherapy Modules.
In addition to her important contributions to classroom teaching, Dr. Aleksunes has significantly strengthened and expanded the research opportunities available to undergraduate students in the school. In 2010, she took over as Co-director of the Honors Research Program at the school, working with other faculty in the department to establish and promote Rutgers’s now highly successful PharmD/PhD program. She also worked to expand the school’s summer undergraduate research fellowship program.
Dr. Aleksunes has been active in teaching one-on-one in her laboratory, and she holds a reputation as an outstanding teacher and mentor. Her students have won major awards at scientific meetings hosted by SOT and ASPET.
Further evidence of her teaching excellence can be found in her recent awards. In 2020, she was named the Rutgers University Chancellor’s Educator of the Year. Recognizing her strong commitment to students, the graduating PharmD class of 2021 voted Dr. Aleksunes as the William and Helen Levine Teacher of the Year. Additionally, this year, she received the Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences Distinguished Mentor Award.
Recipient: Ishita Choudhary
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: DVM
Institution/Affiliation: Louisiana State University
Dr. Choudhary was very happy and deeply honored to receive this award.
Dr. Choudhary's research focuses on investigating the cell type-specific role of IL4Ra signaling in allergic asthma and she got the award for the same research. Her future goal is to identify the molecular targets that can be targeted to prevent environmental toxicant-induced and allergen-induced lung injury.
Recipient: Rachel Lacroix
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BSc
Institution/Affiliation: University of Calgary
Ms. Lacroix was thrilled to receive the Vera W. Hudson and Elizabeth K. Weisburger Award, as she saw it to be very prestigious and she was sure she was amongst several well-qualified applicants. This award was pivotal in allowing her attendance at the SOT Annial Meeting and in giving her platform session on neurodevelopment. Ms. Lacroix feels inspired by her receipt of this award to continue pursuing her research and the extracurriculars that have shaped her experience in her PhD studies to this point.
Glyphosate is the number-one herbicidal chemical to date, given its effectiveness in blocking plant growth and survival. Ms. Lacroix's research investigates the effects of RoundUp (a glyphosate-based herbicide) and glyphosate on neurodevelopment, using the zebrafish as a model. She looked deeper into understanding how these exposures may affect behaviour, neurogenesis, and gene expression in her model. Thus far, she has seen glyphosate, or RoundUp, to impair locomotive and anxiety-like behaviours at 5 days of age, as well as effect the timing of neuron birth across neurodevelopment and cause misregulation in a small subset of genes. Ms. Lacroix's receipt of this award is based on this work, as well as her participation in the autistic community, where she has developed a scientific research program for youth on the spectrum.
Recipient: Jaclynn Meshanni
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: BS
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Ms. Meshanni was extremely honored and shocked to win this award. WIT is such an inclusive and wonderful Special Interest Group and she is so proud to be a part of it.
Ms. Meshanni's research focuses on elucidating the inflammatory mediated response in chemical warfare induced pulmonary injury.
Recipient: Alan Kim
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: MS
Institution/Affiliation: The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
Mr. Kim was genuinely shocked and excited when he received the notification of this award. It was completely unexpected and he was so happy to receive the award. The scholarship will provide Mr. Kim the funds to attend SOT 2023 without stressing about finances and logistics. It will let him fully experience and enjoy the conference so he can learn and collaborate with the other researchers that share his interests and passions. He feels that it will also be a great opportunity to get some constructive feedback and criticisms of his research from people directly in the field, which will help him focus and improve his research project.
Mr. Kim's lab group is the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT). They use cells ethically sourced from adult donors who provide them with cells that can then be reversed into induced pluripotent stem cells. This provides researchers with human-derived cells which maintain the genetic diversity of their donors while providing the lab the flexibility to apply them in their model. Mr. Kim differentiated these cells into neurons and then expanded them into 3D brain organoids which then developed the diverse cell types and complex interactions which model the human brain. His project uses CRISPR/Cas9-moditified stem cells which differentiate into fluorescent neurons so he can track disruptions to neurodevelopment over time from chemical exposures. Mr. Kim's future goals are to transfect additional fluorescent-tags into the stem cells, optimize high-content imaging systems to increase the throughput of his model, and hopefully validate this alternative model for neurotoxicity testing to reduce animal use in experimentation.
Recipient: Chao Ji
Award Year: 2023
Current Degrees: PhD
Institution/Affiliation: Indiana University Bloomington
Dr. Ji is delighted to receive this prestigious award and immediately shared this exciting news with her advisor Dr. Kan Shao. This award motivates her to continue her research work in computational toxicology. This award will help Dr. Ji get extra training in toxicology through attending SOT conferences and workshops to conduct more in-depth research. As a part of an under-represented group, this award will allow her to network and collaborate in the computational toxicology community and contribute more to diversity.
Dr. Ji is doing research in environmental health and conducting innovative computational approaches to advance health risk assessment to protect humans from exposure to environmental chemicals for healthier living. In the future, she hopes to establish an independent research group like Prof. Yves Alarie, focusing on practical methods to fundamentally evaluate and reduce potential risks of pollutants in the environment to human health, and also to foster future scientists in environmental health & toxicology and give them the necessary support for their career development in the multidiscipline area. Dr. Ji's current postdoc project is NIEHS-funded to develop a web-based computational system for chemical risk assessment using omics data. Her work incorporates genomics and dose-response models to derive the reference doses and to facilitate the practice of toxicity estimates of chemicals such as pesticides and drugs at a large-scale. Based on the system her team developed, they are now working on applying the risk assessment concept further to general environmental health problems such as substance use disorders and PFAS pollution to protect human health.