Cigarette smoke contains myriad compounds that are known mutagens and carcinogens, and the health risks associated with active smoking and secondhand smoke are well established. Nearly 10 years ago, researchers at Berkeley Lab identified another potentially hazardous source of tobacco exposure: “thirdhand smoke,” the toxic residues that linger on indoor surfaces and in dust long after a cigarette has been extinguished. A team led by Antoine Snijders, Jian-Hua Mao, and Bo Hang in Biosciences’ Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE) Division have determined that early thirdhand smoke exposure is also associated with increased incidence and severity of lung cancer in mice.
Thirdhand Smoke Study Gets Renewed Media Attention
Research published earlier this year by Berkeley Lab scientists in Biological Systems and Engineering Division (BSE) showing that exposure to thirdhand smoke was associated with low body weight and immune changes in young mice has recently received a flurry of renewed media attention. Antoine Snijders was interviewed via Skype for a segment that aired on New York’s Fox 5 News. In it, he noted that human infants and toddlers could potentially be at risk of exposure. “They play with toys, they play on carpets, there’s much more hand-to-mouth action than most adults do. So the exposure levels could be significantly higher in that age group,” he said. An article on USAToday.com quoted Bo Hang and Jian-Hua Mao. “We suspected that the young are most vulnerable because of their immature immune systems, but we didn’t have a lot of hard evidence to show that before,” Hang said. The study was also referenced on the blog Bustle which linked to the original Berkeley Lab News Center article.
New Machine Learning Technique Provides Translational Results
A team of scientists has developed an unsupervised multi-scale machine learning technique that can automatically and specifically capture biomedical events or concepts directly from raw data. They have initiated the multi-disciplinary platform: Berkeley Biomedical Data Science Center (BBDS), which aims at facilitating and nurturing data-intensive biomedical science. They will apply this technique to three ongoing projects related to cancer risk assessment and diagnosis, as well as personalized medicine.
What a Genome-Wide Screening Can Reveal about Cancer Survival
Berkeley Lab researchers in the Biological Systems and Engineering Division have developed a 12-gene score tied to the odds of relapse-free breast cancer survival. The scoring system is based on an analysis of large genomic datasets and patient data, and it could eventually be developed for clinical use.
Antoine Snijders, research scientist, led the team that included Xuan Mao, Matthew Lee, Jeffrey Zhu and Carissa Zhu, all students from Campolindo High School in Moraga, California, who worked as interns at Berkeley Lab in 2016. “Berkeley Lab is committed to training the next generation of future cancer research scientists,” said Snijders. Under the supervision of Snijders, they led the programming effort and computational analysis that helped identify the relevant genes and that formed the basis of the scoring system. Snijders said, “It is exciting to see how these students contributed their computational skills to breast cancer research.” Read more in the Berkeley Lab News Center.
Thirdhand Smoke Affects Weight, Blood Cell Development in Mice
Berkeley Lab researchers found that the sticky residue left behind by tobacco smoke led to changes in weight and blood cell count in mice. These latest findings add to a growing body of evidence that thirdhand smoke exposure may be harmful.
Researchers from the Biosciences Biological Systems and Engineering Division (BSE) and the Energy Technologies Area (ETA) teamed up with scientists at UC San Francisco and Nanjing Medical University for the study. The findings, reported in a Feb. 3 paper in Scientific Reports, suggest that the dangers associated with smoking continue long after the cigarette is snuffed out. Read more in the Berkeley Lab News Center.
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