Pharmacology & Toxicology

Postdoctoral researcher in the Gore Lab Dr. Emily Hilz is a Phase 2 winner of a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services competition to reduce Black women’s risk of exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Hilz’s winning program created Endoscreen, a mobile phone application to increase awareness of and reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals in personal care products.

Division Head and Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology and Doluisio Regents Professor Karen Vasquez, Ph.D. recently published an article in Nature Communications. The study, titled “Obesity increases genomic instability at DNA repeat-mediated endogenous mutation hotspots,” represents the first demonstration that obesity increases genetic instability at alternative DNA structures (in this case H-DNA), which are hotspots for mutations in human cancers.