Brandon Pierce
University of Chicago, IL·Public Health & Epidemiology
Why do two people with the same exposure to a toxic chemical, or the same inherited DNA variant, end up with very different cancer risk? Work here attacks that question from two directions.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Genetics
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
arsenic
inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry
drinking water contamination
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jul 2030
What they work on
- Build and test a workflow that measures arsenic species, separating the more toxic trivalent forms from pentavalent ones, in blood mononuclear cells, urine-derived urothelial cells, and buccal cells using hydride generation cryotrapping inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.
- Characterize how arsenic species vary across these three cell types in Bangladeshi participants spanning a wide exposure range, how strongly the specimen types agree, and how species abundance relates to participant characteristics.
- Disentangle the overlapping genetic signals at the 5p15.33 region containing TERT, the telomere-maintaining enzyme gene, through co-localization and fine mapping across more than fifteen cancer types, blood cell traits, telomere length, and epigenetic aging in multi-ancestry data.
- Identify how 5p15.33 variants alter gene regulation using multi-omic quantitative trait loci in induced pluripotent stem cells and differentiating cultures, and test their effect on mutation at the TERT hotspot in TCGA tumors and on mutation burden in normal GTEx tissues.
- Assess whether telomere length and telomere-associated variants outside 5p15.33 drive somatic mutation, biological aging, and cancer risk, using tissue-specific GTEx data with Mendelian randomization and genetic correlation.
- Advance cancer population science across the prevention-to-survivorship continuum by studying environmental, lifestyle, genetic and behavioral risk factors and testing interventions for prevention, early detection, and survivor outcomes.
More about the research
One line follows arsenic, a contaminant in drinking water and food, and measures the chemical forms it takes inside human cells to explain why some people handle it better than others. A second line dissects a stretch of chromosome 5 containing TERT, the gene for the enzyme that maintains the protective caps on chromosome ends, where inherited variation shifts risk for more than fifteen cancers and many aging-related traits. A third role is programmatic leadership in cancer prevention and control, connecting population-level cancer research across a cancer center.
Why it matters
Arsenic in water and food is a recognized carcinogen, and cell-level measurement of its more toxic trivalent forms could sharpen estimates of who is most at risk and inform prevention and screening strategies in the US and in heavily exposed regions such as Bangladesh. Clarifying how TERT variants and telomere length shape cancer susceptibility and aging could identify mechanisms that future prevention or treatment efforts might target. Program-level work aims to lower the cancer burden in the surrounding region through prevention, earlier detection, and better survivorship care.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Mary Armanios
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Genetics
Identify additional large-effect inherited variants that cause long telomere syndromes in cancer-prone families, extending beyond the POT1 mutations and the two other telomere genes already found to phenocopy them.
Andres Cardenas
Stanford University, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether a 12-month in-home HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filter intervention slows epigenetic and proteomic aging clocks in the nasal lining and blood of older former smokers with eosinophilic COPD, using samples from a randomized sham-controlled trial.
Andrew Ludlow
University of Michigan, MI·Physiology
Generate transgenic rats expressing full-length TERT or the catalytically inactive β-del-TERT splice variant to test whether TERT's mitochondrial functions protect tissues independent of telomere lengthening.
The school
University of Chicago: 39 labs on PI Pages, $681M a year on research, 457 research doctorates a year.
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