Last July, Science Park created a new program for continuing and expanding these studies, the Center for Research on Environmental Disease. The center in central Texas is a hub of collaboration, with members in Smithville, Houston, and Austin from the fields of epidemiology, pharmacology, and biostatistics as well as carcinogenesis. The idea is that the bulk of the money in the center grant is to provide support for already existing, funded research programs and for training people to work together. The center faculty do receive assistance from service core laboratories, which perform assays that the individual scientists do not have the equipment or expertise to do. There are also associate members, good people who don't have funding for a short time and junior faculty who could benefit from interacting with center members.
Associate members have access to center resources through collaborations with full members.
Everything is designed to try to get people to work together. One of the projects that has flourished as a result of such interactions is a study of smoking and lung cancer. With her colleagues in the Department of Epidemiology, Margaret R. Spitz, M.D., M.P.H., professor and chair, Department of Epidemiology, and head of the Environmental Epidemiology and Ecogenetics research core, is conducting a study of susceptibility markers in lung cancer. Spitz's coworkers have developed an assay to measure individual's sensitivity to smoking-related carcinogens by using white blood cells, which are easy and inexpensive to obtain from large numbers of people. A pilot study showed that smokers with lung cancer were more likely to be mutagen sensitive than were smokers without lung cancer.