Supporting Environmental Research

NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences will invest $6.8 million in 2008 for three new centers that will bridge the gap between basic research and clinical treatment of diseases caused by environmental factors. The Disease Investigation Through Specialized Clinically-Oriented Ventures in Environmental Research (DISCOVER) program fosters an integrated research approach that mixes laboratory research with population-based studies to study how the environment interacts with biological processes to preserve health or cause disease.

"The DISCOVER centers will help to define the role of environmental agents in the initiation and progression of human disease and develop new ways to both prevent and treat disease," said Dennis Lang, interim director at the NIEHS Division of Extramural Research & Training. "The potential impact of the research that these three centers will be conducting is enormous."

One of the new centers will be at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health and will focus on childhood autism in urban environments. Another located at the Columbia University School of Public Health will focus on the effects of air pollutions from traffic on children's lungs. The University of Washington, will host the third new center, which `will support research on the impact of traffic-related air pollution on cardiovascular diseases.