Pesticide Exposure and Predictive Genomics: Finding Early Stage Asymptomatic Disease

Dr. Lisa Satterwhite, Duke Univ. Biomedical Engineering, will speak on Jan. 18, 2018, in Field Auditorium, Environment Hall.

Dr. Satterwhite joined Biomedical Engineering at Duke to study health inequity in Latino migrant farmworkers and agricultural communities of eastern NC, loves optics and collaborates with Duke Photonics to create diagnostic optical signatures for sickle cell anemia and cancer, and teaches a class where students do original research towards an early stage pancreatic cancer diagnostic. This year, the class identified a blood biomarker that appears to function as a tumor invisibility cloak. She has developed human neural stem cell models for the NICHES CEHC and has found that ascorbic acid remediates cell division deficits from exposure to nicotine and pesticides.

On Thursday, January 18, we will hear about Dr. Satterwhite's work with the Latino farmworker communities of eastern NC. She initiated an ongoing field study in 2010 after learning of severe birth defects among Latina farmworkers. She will tell us about the first genomic signature for pesticide exposure that is highly similar to Parkinson's disease and early results of neurodevelopmental deficits in children and youth who do farmwork. She will end with predictive risk models based on the electronic medical record that can be applied to any diagnosis related to an environmental exposure.