The Molecular and Cellular Processes on Environmental Toxicity (McPET) focus group is composed of vibrant investigators whose laboratories are devoted to understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms of toxicity. The group’s work primarily focuses on animal models of environmentally-mediated diseases, including the impact of environmental exposures during windows of susceptibility from pre-conception through adulthood. Consistent with CACHET’s broader goals, McPET’s mission is to understand the mechanistic underpinnings of toxicity that contribute to urban health disparities. The nature of this group promotes inclusivity across broad disease areas, including skin, prostate, and ovarian cancers; uterine fibroids; diabetes, obesity, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease; cardiopulmonary disorders; and neuropsychiatric diseases. Exposures of interest to McPET investigators include air pollution, arsenic, bisphenol A, PCBs, selenium, tolylfluanid, and UV radiation as well as other metals and metalloids. Pathways of toxicity that are of specific interest to the group include oxidative stress, RNA modifications, genomic instability, mitochondrial dysfunction, metabolic derangements, epigenetic changes, and disruptions in stem cell biology.

An additional area of strength of these investigators is the unique technical expertise using microfluidic devices to study liver function and metabolism and the female reproductive tract, offering investigators opportunities to leverage high-throughput approaches to illuminate the impact of various toxicants on complex physiology. By bringing together investigators studying numerous diseases, exposures, and pathways of toxicity, McPET uniquely fosters synergy across CACHET by assisting investigators in identifying common mechanisms of toxicity, facilitating resource and model sharing, and translating basic science to promote application to epidemiological studies, which collectively support CACHET’s overall mission to mitigate environmental drivers of human disease and their disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities.