Chronicle Online e-News
$2.5 million federal awards will enable Cornell scientist David
Soderlund to assess health risks of two classes of insecticides
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/June07/Soderlund.g
rant.sl.html
June 9, 2007
By joe Ogrodnick
jmo3@cornell.edu
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has
awarded Cornell insecticide toxicologist David Soderlund two grants,
providing more than $2.5 million over five years, to study how
insecticides affect human health.
The grants are among the largest single-investigator research grants
ever awarded to a member of the faculty at the New York State
Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, N.Y. Soderlund is
professor of insecticide toxicology. The NIEHS is part of the
National Institutes of Health.
The projects involve two chemical classes of insecticides that target
the sodium ion channel proteins of nerve membranes. These proteins
play a critical role in the electrical signaling of nerve cells. The
research is expected to provide new insights into mechanisms of
insecticide toxicity that will aid in assessing human health risks
associated with using these insecticides.
"Although each research project asks different research questions
about a different chemical class of insecticides, the main research
approaches, techniques and tools are common to both projects," said
Soderland. He added that the two grants will allow him to build a
large research team, making both projects more productive than they
would be individually.
For both projects, Soderlund will use cloned sodium channel genes to
turn cultured cells into synthetic nerve cells. This technique avoids
the use of experimental animals as a source of nervous tissue and has
the added benefit of giving researchers precise knowledge of and
control over the specific sodium channel proteins they are studying.
The synthetic nerve cell approach also provides the Soderlund
laboratory with the means to address one of the most significant
problems in toxicology: the need to extrapolate insecticide risks to
humans from research with other organisms.
"The use of cloned genes and cell-expression systems provides us with
access to information on insecticide action on human target proteins
that is simply not available otherwise," said Soderlund.
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