Cycle 6 - May 2022 OEFC Research Voucher Awards

Medium OEFC Research Voucher Award(s): Medium research voucher applications support the expenses (up to $5,000) associated with critical exploratory research and proof-of-concept studies needed by CIEHS members for hypothesis generation and grant (re)submission. 

Principal Investigator:  Walter H. Watson, Ph.D.
Collaborators: J. Christopher States, Ph.D. , Ana Ferragut-Cardoso, Ph.D.
Title: Comparative keratinocyte responses to environmental arsenic
Description:  Environmental arsenic is a world-wide health problem, and the skin is one of the major target organs of arsenic toxicity. Our OEFC Research Voucher Award from the CIEHS will help us answer the question of why some skin cells are resistant to arsenic toxicity while others are not. We will use ICP-MS to assess rates of arsenic import and export by different keratinocyte cells. The results should shed light on how differences in formation and export of glutathione-arsenic complexes translate into differences in sensitivity to cell death and transformation into cancer cells.