Styblo awarded NIH grant to create a Virtual Consortium

Dr. Mirek Styblo

Mirek Styblo, PhD, associate professor of nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, recently received a National Institutes of Health grant to create a Virtual Consortium for Translational/Transdisciplinary Environmental Research (ViCTER). The consortium will be built around Styblo’s existing NIH-funded project titled “Environmental Arsenic and Diabetes Mellitus.”

Styblo and his team use a translational approach to characterize the association between chronic exposure to arsenic – a common drinking water contaminant – and diabetes. For example, a population study in Chihuahua, Mexico, examines associations between exposure to arsenic in drinking water, metabolism of arsenic, diet, obesity and risk of diabetes among Chihuahua residents.

ViCTER expands the scope of the parent project to include a comprehensive assessment of metabolomic and epigenomic biomarkers of arsenic exposure and diabetes associated with this exposure. The ultimate goal is to find specific biomarkers that will improve risk assessment of diabetes in arsenicosis-endemic areas and will help to identify individuals with increased susceptibility to the diabetogenic effects of chronic exposures to arsenic.

Investigators on Styblo’s team from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health are Rebecca Fry, PhD, assistant professor of environmental sciences and engineering, and Zuzana Drobna, PhD, research assistant professor of nutrition. Fry and Thomas O’Connell, PhD, research associate professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and researcher at The Hamner Insitutes for Health Sciences, are co-principal investigators with Styblo for the ViCTER project.