Wayne State University receives $7.5 million NIH renewal for environmental center

DETROIT, May 2, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Wayne State University received notice from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health of the $7.5 millionrenewal for five years of the Center for Urban Responses to Environmental Stressors (CURES). The previous NIH grant for CURES totaled $2.4 million for three years.

CURES — one of 22 P30 Core Centers funded by NIEHS — is situated in the heart of Detroit, with the goal of understanding the integrated health impacts of environmental exposures to complex chemical and non-chemical contaminants in Detroit's urban landscape. CURES is focused on establishing a cleaner and healthier living and working environment in the city of Detroit and throughout the region.

"Modern-era" diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes compromise the quality of life of residents living in an industrialized urban environment such as Detroit and are a consequence of dynamic interactions among an individual's genetic and epigenetic make-up, nutritional status and environmental stressors, which affect key cellular networks causing disease.

"Our goal is to provide leadership that will identify, evaluate and mitigate environmental health concerns in close collaboration with the community and environmental policy makers," said Melissa Runge-Morris, M.D., director of CURES and the Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at Wayne State. "Detroit has an overabundance of industrial and post-industrial environmental toxicants, socioeconomic strains, violence and decay of housing and urban infrastructure, and we have assembled a unique interdisciplinary team of established and new environmental health scientists and community partners to address major environmental health challenges facing Detroit's racially and ethnically diverse population."

It is the goal of CURES to enhance and empower community partners to create health programs for the community and develop appropriate strategies based on CURES research to affect policy so as to mitigate the risks associated with urban environmental exposures.

The award number for this NIH grant is ES020957-04.

About Wayne State University
Wayne State University is one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit research.wayne.edu.

Contact: Julie O'Connor
Voice: (313) 577-8845
E-mail:julie.oconnor@wayne.edu

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wayne-state-university-receives-75-million-nih-renewal-for-environmental-center-300449980.html

SOURCE Wayne State University