Applied research at the Wadsworth Center encompasses a wide variety of highly collaborative activities.  Staff are committed to perform extensive research to develop and apply new methods and technologies to detect and characterize human diseases, environmental analytes, and infectious disease pathogens.  While focused on improving public health, this research often translates to clinical applications, which serve to fill gaps where commercial products and services are unavailable.  Some examples in infectious diseases include the application of molecular methods to detect cases of botulism, tuberculosis, pertussis and HIV-2.  Clinical research is also aimed to improve methods for assessing genetic relatedness among microbes, which is essential to public health outbreak investigations and improving surveillance.  In Newborn Screening, a major focus is on refining existing methods or developing new methods to screen for additional conditions and to reduce the number of false-positive results.  In environmental testing the focus is on expanding our capabilities in biomonitoring and to better detect new and existing contaminants. Read more...

Photochemical smog and air pollution have been shown to cause acute and chronic damages to human and ecosystem health.  Atmospheric chemists at the Wadsworth Center are at the forefront of understanding and addressing the critical role gaseous and particulate pollutants play in the formation of oxidants and smog, and the human health impact of pollution.  Laboratory studies, field observations, and exposure assessments are conducted by our scientists to tackle these environmental issues. Read more...

The global economy and public health are threatened by the alarming emergence and spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria. To meet this challenge, the goals of the Bacterial Drug Resistance focus group are to actively elucidate mechanisms of resistance to current antibiotics, and to identify novel targets for the next generation of antibiotic drugs. The initial research focus is on Mycobacterium tuberculosis, but the identification of novel drug targets will translate to all bacterial pathogens as the research group expands. The scientific synergy between established scientists in this research group is further enhanced by cross-disciplinary collaborations with investigators in structural biology, public health genomics, and clinical mycobacteriology. Read more...

This group includes scientists who apply cutting-edge structural and cell biology techniques to study fundamental cellular processes in normal and diseased conditions, and in microbial pathogens. These studies provide molecular detail of interactions between cellular components involved in cell division, locomotion, muscle contraction, gene expression, host-pathogen interaction, and cancer. The goals are to not only understand how disease develops, but also to identify novel drug targets and mechanisms of drug resistance. Techniques include, x-ray crystallography, NMR, high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy, laser-based cellular dissection combined with light-microscopy, and computational biology, in addition to common biochemistry and molecular biology approaches. Read more...

During the past decade, significant conceptual changes have occurred in relation to how researchers think about health and diseases, the role the environment plays in disease etiology, and how best to assess human exposure to environmental pollutants and dietary chemicals. A key overarching concept that emerged is the ‘exposome’, which the CDC defines as “the measure of all the exposures of an individual in a lifetime and how those exposures relate to health”. Exposomics is the study of the exposome and relies, among others, on biomonitoring to assess internal exposure and its effects through the measurement of biomarkers. A biomarker is “a key molecular or cellular event [or molecule] that links a specific environmental exposure to a health outcome”. According to the CDC, biomonitoring provides the most health-relevant assessments of exposures because it measures the amount of a chemical that is actually present internally in people, and not the amount of the chemical that is present in the environment. We propose to identify specific environmental and dietary factors that affect the health of New Yorkers.  Specifically, we propose to address the role of economic, ethnic, and geographic disparities in disease incidence, focusing on cancer, cardiovascular and neurological diseases, diabetes and other obesity-related diseases. To this effect we will employ both a comprehensive biomonitoring approach and a specific disease-focused approach. Read more...

Infectious diseases continue to exact a high toll on the health of New Yorkers, and the potential for intentional use of infectious agents as biological terror agents also cannot be ignored.  Infectious agents may be bacteria, fungi or viruses, and each requires a different treatment modality. The threats to public health are especially high from newly emerging pathogens and well-known infectious agents that have become resistant to existing drug therapies, because the tools available for detection and/or treatment of these agents may be limited. In addition, medical advances in cancer treatment and organ transplantation have increased the number of people with immune deficiencies who are especially vulnerable to infectious agents. The infectious disease process involves a complex interaction between the infecting agent(s) and the host immune responses that are mounted against them. The immune system must respond to each infecting agent with the proper balance of attack and restraint to eliminate the pathogen without causing damage to the host. Our scientific goals are to determine how specific microbial pathogens bypass natural host-defense mechanisms during the disease process, and to identify the components of the immune system that are needed to protect against each agent. This information is critical for the development of new drugs to combat resistant organisms, vaccines to prevent disease, diagnostic assays to detect and track infectious agents, and biomarkers that correlate with disease susceptibility and/or progression. Investigators address these issues with a variety of molecular, microbiological, structural and immunological approaches. Read more...

Researchers in Molecular Genetics, using model systems including coronavirus, yeast, and mice, employ both focused and genome-wide approaches to investigate gene function and mechanism. Areas of investigation include virus replication and assembly; mobile DNA elements; transcriptional regulation and chromatin structure; genetics of complex behavior in the mouse; and genetic contributions to epilepsy. Read more...

Recent advances have transformed neuroscience research. Wadsworth scientists and engineers are augmenting and exploiting these advances in many different areas. For example, several investigators study the genetic, anatomical, physiological, and immunological bases of neurodevelopmental, neurodegenerative, environmental, and traumatic disorders. Furthermore, the recent realization that activity-dependent plasticity occurs continually throughout the CNS and throughout life, and that new technology can support complex real-time adaptive interactions with the CNS to induce and guide this plasticity, enables others to develop powerful new research tools and therapeutic methods that can restore useful function to people disabled by injury or disease. These investigators are developing new methods for interacting with the CNS so as to induce plasticity and improve impaired functions. They place strong emphasis on translating basic science advances achieved in the laboratory into clinical studies in humans and eventually into clinical practice. This translational work is concentrated in the new Wadsworth-based National Center for Adaptive Neurotechnologies, which is supported by a P41 grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.  Read more...

The Wadsworth Center’s Nuclear Chemistry Laboratory (NCL) program has two objectives:  mandated radiological surveillance in NYS and research in radiological sciences. The surveillance program assesses exposure of the population to ionizing radiation and involves monitoring of the environment around nuclear power plants for fission products as well as monitoring of drinking water supplies for natural radioactivity. Programs to characterize occurrence and exposure to natural radioactivity focus on radon, with the development of township-level maps indicating indoor radon-potential. Programs focusing on radiological emergency response to potential accidents or terrorism threats involving radioactivity are performed in cooperation with the NYS agencies as well as with US FDA for radiological food protection. The research in radiological sciences is primarily concerned with the development of new and more sensitive methods to detect ionizing radiation in environmental, food, and bioassay samples, such as alpha and gamma spectrometry and liquid scintillation counting. New methods are researched to separate specific radionuclides from complex matrices. An additional aspect of the research program is to develop statistical and modeling tools to quantify radioactivity in the environment and improve the decision methodology. Read more...

The Center for Public Health Genomics is focused on the application of NextGen sequencing (NGS) on issues of public health importance. In particular, its aims are to develop methods to:

• Enhance the detection, diagnosis and tracking of bacterial, viral and fungal disease outbreaks.
• Improve the detection of drug-resistant variants and identification of new agents of disease.
• Enable the characterization and differentiation of organisms at a level not possible with existing technologies.
• Develop screening and confirmatory tests for genetic disorders of newborns that would not be possible with established methods.
• Provide the rapid monitoring and response to public health emergencies that only an on-site dedicated facility can provide.
• Provide essential expertise for validation of consumer point-of-service genetic testing, proficiency testing and regulation of NGS laboratory testing. Read more...

The majority of emerging diseases are of zoonotic origin and an ever-present threat to the health of citizens of New York State and beyond. This threat is likely to increase over time due, in part, to climate change driving expansion of animal reservoirs and vector populations into new geographic regions, and by the exponential rise in international travel and commerce. Research in this area is designed to advance our understanding of zoonotic agents and their associated hosts and vectors, and ultimately to drive the development of predictive and control measures to reduce the human morbidity and mortality. The Wadsworth Center includes highly unique facilities and resources for the study of these pathogens and researchers in this area possess a broad range of expertise including ecological, organismal, molecular, genetic, structural, and biochemical. Particular pathogens of interest include mosquito and tick-borne viruses such as West Nile virus, Dengue virus, eastern equine encephalitis virus and Powassan virus, as well as other zoonotic agents including rabies virus. Areas of study include virus adaptation and evolution, vector genetics and adaptation, host-virus interactions, antiviral discovery, and molecular/biochemical mechanisms. Read more...