Despite the tremendous inter-individual variability in the response to environmental toxins, we simply do not understand why certain people develop disease when challenged with environmental agents, and others remain healthy. Although an emerging consensus suggests that many of the complex and prevalent diseases that humans develop occur as a result of multiple biologically unique gene-gene and gene-environment interactions, this conceptual framework is limited. In fact, the development of disease in humans, environmental and otherwise, is far more complex. Environmental exposures affect those that are vulnerable temporally (age), spatially (geographically), and by unique circumstance (co-morbid disease, nutritional status, economic status, race, and genetics). Even this paradigm fails to address the complex interaction of endogenous and exogenous risks that ultimately interact to cause disease. While the recent advances in human and molecular genetics provide an unparalleled opportunity to understand how genes and genetic changes interact with environmental stimuli to either preserve health or cause disease, without accounting for the temporal, spatial, and other unique components of an individual’s microenvironment, our understanding of environmental health will remain incomplete.

Thus, the Center for Comparative Biology of Vulnerable Populations seeks to understand how biological, physiological, and social aspects of vulnerability alter the effect of the environment on human health.