A new grant will help Wayne State University researchers explore the links between bacterial infections, the environmental factors that increase their susceptibility and the risk of preterm birth. The five-year, $2,858,821 grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, "PFAS increases susceptibility to infection-mediated preterm birth," will be led by Michael Petriello, Ph.D.
, assistant professor in Wayne State's Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and Pharmacology in the School of Medicine. Petriello hopes that the team's studies will identify critical pathways responsible for preterm birth and establish a causative link between pollutant exposures and adverse birth outcomes. He said Wayne State's collaborative atmosphere made the study possible.
When I came to Wayne State five years ago, I was looking for interdisciplinary collaborators and I saw how strong this university is in terms of preterm birth studies and expertise." Michael Petriello, Assistant Professor, Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and Pharmacology, School of Medicine, Wayne State University "Dr. Gil Mor has done some great work on the subject, and he was focusing mainly on viruses.
We've initiated the collaboration with the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development thanks to studies by our Superfund Research Center, CLEAR (The Center for Leadership in Environmental Awareness and Research), related to benzine exposure in preter.