UC Davis Launches $14.05M WE-CAIR Program to Decode Wildfire Smoke's Cardiovascular and Airway Damage
核心洞察
UC Davis (搜索) investigators have launched WE-CAIR, a multidisciplinary program to study how wildfire smoke drives cardiovascular and airway inflammation (搜索) over the short and long term.
The initiative is backed by a five-year NIH Program Project Grant (P01 HL179398) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute totaling $14,050,840, including $8,993,941 in direct costs.
Four integrated projects will probe ILC2 immune cells, the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (搜索), the epigenetic regulator TET1 (搜索), and the role of psychosocial stress and social vulnerability.
A team of investigators at UC Davis (搜索) has launched a multidisciplinary research program to determine how wildfire smoke exposure drives cardiovascular and airway inflammation (搜索), an effort supported by a five-year Program Project Grant (P01) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. The award, designated P01 HL179398, is expected to total $14,050,840, including $8,993,941 in direct costs.
The program, called WE-CAIR (Wildfire Exposure: Cardiovascular and Airway Inflammation (搜索) Research), responds to a rapidly expanding environmental health burden. Studies estimate that the number of people exposed to at least one day of extreme wildfire smoke each year has increased 27-fold over the past decade.
"Wildfire smoke is becoming a recurring environmental health threat for millions of people," said Angela Haczku, director of the UC Davis (搜索) Lung Center and contact program director of the WE-CAIR study. "We want to understand why some individuals are more susceptible than others and what mechanisms are responsible for health decline after long-term exposure. Ultimately, we hope to identify biomarkers of risk and biological pathways that could lead to better prevention strategies and new treatments."
Four Integrated Projects Targeting Immune and Epigenetic Pathways
Wildfire smoke exposure is known to acutely worsen cardiovascular and pulmonary disease (搜索), but the long-term health effects remain poorly understood. The WE-CAIR team designed four closely integrated projects, supported by bioinformatics, epigenetics, clinical and mouse exposure-simulator cores, to investigate how immune and epigenetic pathways, psychosocial stress and social vulnerability drive health decline over time.
Project 1 focuses on a novel subgroup of immune cells — group 2 innate lymphoid cells (搜索) (ILC2s) — that were shown by the Haczku Lab to abnormally produce the highly inflammatory cytokines IL-13 (搜索) and IL-17 (搜索) when triggered by wildfire smoke.
Project 2 studies the role of the environmental sensor aryl hydrocarbon receptor (搜索) (AhR) in mediating wildfire smoke-induced cardiovascular inflammation (搜索).
Project 3 investigates how the epigenetic regulator TET1 (搜索) may protect against airway and cardiovascular inflammation (搜索).
Project 4 explores how psychosocial stress and social vulnerability influence the health effects of wildfire smoke exposure.
The program combines a human clinical studies core with a controlled wildfire smoke exposure models core and a molecular and epigenetic core. All collected data will undergo systems-level data integration.
"This unique program allows us to connect the entire chain: from what is in wildfire smoke to how the immune system and epigenome respond, and ultimately to what we see in patients. We need a coordinated scientific effort that examines every aspect," Haczku said.
An Unprecedented Scale of Interdisciplinary Collaboration
WE-CAIR brings together 22 investigators from across UC Davis (搜索), spanning the UC Davis School of Medicine, the Center for Health and the Environment, the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine, the College of Engineering, the Air Quality Research Center and the National Biomedical Research Institute, as well as collaborators at the UC San Diego School of Medicine (搜索).
"By bringing together experts from multiple disciplines, we will leave no stone unturned, from understanding exposure and biological mechanisms to identifying ways to prevent, mitigate and treat the health effects," Haczku said.
Haczku, an internationally known expert in pulmonary immunology, added that research on this scale is unprecedented in the field of wildfire smoke, and that the study's level of interdisciplinary collaboration is essential for generating the data and insights needed.
Additional UC Davis (搜索) co-investigators include Keith Bein, Clare Cannon, Hong Ji, Janine LaSalle, Miriam Nuño, Jill Silverman, Christoph Volker, Barton Wise and Amir Zeki. UC San Diego collaborators include Praveen Akuthota and Rajat Suri.
The work is supported by federal research funding, which the university notes helps transform promising discoveries into real-world breakthroughs that save lives and improve quality of life.