Brigitte Frohnert
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Public Health & Epidemiology
Autoimmune diseases, in which the immune system attacks the body's own tissues, are becoming more common in children. Examples include thyroid disease, celiac disease and type 1 diabetes.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
autoimmune disease
pediatric autoimmunity
exposome
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Establish a transdisciplinary consortium linking existing childhood autoimmune disease studies, including a landscape analysis of available resources and two multiday workshops to expand collaborations.
- Review existing methods for measuring and analyzing the early-life exposome, the total set of environmental exposures, and assess how to evaluate its effect on autoimmune disease pathways in children.
- Develop data science methods that integrate environmental and genetic data to identify precise risk profiles for childhood autoimmune disease, demonstrated through pilot analyses of existing data.
- Build research infrastructure to support EXACT, a planned future large-scale national study of the exposome in childhood autoimmune disease.
More about the research
Early onset can mean a more aggressive disease and more complications over time. Different autoimmune diseases share risk genes and possibly environmental triggers. Their rising rates suggest that environmental changes play a role. The exposome is the full set of environmental exposures a person experiences across life. Understanding it could point to modifiable exposures and to ways of slowing or preventing these diseases.
Why it matters
Identifying which environmental exposures drive autoimmune disease in children could guide interventions that slow or prevent conditions such as type 1 diabetes, celiac disease and thyroid disease. Children and the adults they become could benefit. The project lays groundwork for a national research network to find these modifiable risk factors.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jill Norris
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Public Health & Epidemiology
Survey existing cohorts, registries, exposure data, exposome laboratories and analytic methods to assess what is needed to measure environmental exposures before rheumatoid arthritis and lupus begin.
Vaia Lida Chatzi
University of Southern California, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Examine associations of PFAS exposure with omics biomarkers and with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and MASLD (fatty liver disease) in more than 50,000 participants from 18 diverse cohorts.
Lance Waller
Emory University, GA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Develop and support data pipelines that link HERCULES Exposome Research Center members' environmental and health datasets to research projects large and small.
The school
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus: 41 labs on PI Pages, $766M a year on research, 205 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.