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Jonathan Freedman to Head Consortium Toxicology Core

The Nicholas School's Jonathan H. Freedman, associate professor of environmental toxicology, will direct Duke's toxicology core in a new Toxicogenomics Research Consortium created with a $7.5 million grant to the Duke University Medical Center and the Nicholas School from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The award is part of a $37 million NIEHS grant to Duke and four other U.S. academic institutions to unravel the interplay between genes and the environment to better understand how toxic chemicals and other environmental factors influence gene expression. One of the ultimate goals of the project is to develop a database of genomic fingerprints for toxic chemicals. By comparing the fingerprint of a new chemical to the prints in the database, scientists may be able to quickly predict the toxicity of a new compound.

"With this grant, the Nicholas School will be in the genomics business," said Freedman, who will receive $820,000 over five years. Other Nicholas School researchers involved in the consortium are Dr. David A. Schwartz, chief of pulmonary medicine and principal investigator in the Duke effort, and Elwood Linney, professor of microbiology and environment. Both hold secondary appointments in the Nicholas School's Division of Environmental Sciences and Policy.

The first order of business for Freedman's toxicology core will be to set up standards and practices, which will take about a year.

He plans to begin a pilot project this summer that will involve taking the nematode, C. elegans, treating it with cadmium or a toxic metal and then using microarray analysis to see what genes are turned off and turned on. He anticipates it will yield preliminary data for additional consortium studies.

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