The University of Cincinnati Medical Center has established a $6.5 million Center for Environmental Genetics and has named Daniel W. Nebert, a professor of environmental health, to be its first director. Nebert says the center is the first of its kind in the world to study the genetic link between environmental contaminants and human health.
The center opened at the University of Cincinnati in mid-August in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. NIEHS provided the five-year grant to establish the center. It will begin with a staff of 25 investigators with research experience in genetics and biology from the University of Cincinnati. Nebert says the center's focus will be broad--isolating how and why every individual reacts differently to environmental factors. For example, explains Nebert, some people who smoke cigarettes will have a seven-out-of-100 chance of developing...