New NIEHS/NTP director aims to use toxicology science as a key to human disease

New NIEHS/NTP director aims to use toxicology science as a key to human disease

David Schwartz, newly appointed director of NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, plans to build on existing strengths in environmental sciences, basic toxicology and the bridges NIEHS has developed with communities affected by toxic exposures. Schwartz intends to create opportunities for researchers to explore why some toxins affect certain individuals but not others, using individual response to toxins as a means to better understand the larger picture of disease pathogenesis. Disease areas of emphasis likely will include cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, host defense mechanisms and lung diseases.

Improved tools would allow biologists and physician scientists to quantify environmental exposures and how those exposures influence an individual’s risk of disease. Environmental exposure should be considered more broadly in terms of how risks to human health interact with nutritional factors, co-morbid diseases, medications, complex exposures and genetic factors.

In addition to hailing the importance of basic research as supported by NIH's R01 (individual investigator grant) mechanism, Schwartz stressed the need for improved training of individual investigators. He hopes to increase visibility of the field while expanding programs that support mentorship and career development in this area.

Integrating intramural and extramural research programs also will be a priority area for the new director. The institute will also look to support research efforts being pursued in countries with areas suffering a far greater burden of environmental toxins.

Schwartz will replace Kenneth Olden, who stepped down as director last year but remains at NIEHS as a researcher in the intramural program. The new director will officially take his position on April 4, 2005. The institute currently has a budget exceeding $700 million and supports more than 850 research grants.

Schwartz currently serves as director of the Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Division and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Medicine at Duke University, where he led the development interdisciplinary Centers in Environmental Health Sciences, Environmental Genomics and Environmental Asthma. His research focuses on the genetic and biological determinants of environmental lung disease and host defense.