Andres Cardenas
Stanford University, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Can the environment we breathe and drink speed up how fast our bodies age at the molecular level? Epigenetic marks are chemical tags on DNA that control which genes are switched on.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Genetics
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
epigenetic clocks
biological aging
DNA methylation
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through May 2031
What they work on
- 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.
- Determine whether HEPA filtration changes the epigenome, transcriptome, proteome and cytokine profiles in blood and nasal samples, reducing activity in pro-inflammatory and blood-clotting pathways.
- Test whether one-year reductions in biological aging biomarkers are linked to better heart and lung function and help explain the health benefits of home air purification.
- Test whether people in Antofagasta, Chile, who were exposed to high arsenic levels in drinking water early in life show accelerated aging on multiple DNA methylation-based epigenetic clocks in midlife.
- Compare estimated white blood cell composition and DNA methylation signatures between people exposed to arsenic early in life and matched unexposed participants, controlling for current arsenic exposure, smoking and diet.
More about the research
Together with changes in proteins, they sit at the interface between environmental exposures and how our genes are regulated. Patterns in these marks can be combined into "molecular clocks" that estimate biological age. A body whose biological age runs ahead of its calendar age has a higher risk of disease. Both projects use these clocks to ask how pollutants harm health and whether that harm can be measured, lasts over time, or can be reversed.
Why it matters
Particulate air pollution is a leading preventable cause of heart and lung hospitalizations and deaths, especially for people with COPD. Evidence that home HEPA filters change molecular aging and inflammation could support simple household air cleaning for older adults at risk. Millions of people drink arsenic-contaminated water. Showing that early-life exposure leaves lasting epigenetic marks could help focus prevention efforts on critical windows of development.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Lisa Barcellos
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Develop comprehensive wildfire smoke exposure assignments for all members of a multi-ethnic cohort of about 5,000 East Bay adults sampled during the 2020–2021 wildfire seasons.
Stephanie Tuminello
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether World Trade Center exposure accelerates biological aging in male responders, comparing blood DNA methylation clocks such as Horvath, GrimAge and DunedinPACE with unexposed men from the general population.
Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir
Columbia University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Establish how dysanapsis, a mismatch between airway size and lung size, measured early in life relates to lung function trajectories through childhood and to dysanapsis at late adolescence, using 8 birth cohorts, spirometry and lung MRI.
The school
Stanford University: 87 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 739 research doctorates a year.
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