The Superfund Research Center

Fred Tyson is a Program Director in the Genes, Environment and Health Branch of the Division of Extramural Research and Training (DERT) at the National Institute of Environmental Sciences. He received his PhD in cell biology and developmental genetics from Rutgers University.   Postdoctoral training in molecular genetics was obtained at Sloan-Kettering followed by additional training in molecular oncology at Duke.  Tyson served as a Senior Staff Fellow at NIEHS in the Laboratory of Molecular Toxicology and as a Senior Scientist at the Saccamanno Cancer Research Institute in Grand Junction, CO. As an NIEHS program officer, Tyson has developed a research portfolio that employs multi-disciplinary approaches to address environmental health science issues.  He has supported diverse research programs in environmental justice, health disparities, genomics, epigenomics, epitranscriptomics and marine toxicology. His current portfolio responsibilities include oversight of grants and programs addressing lung cancer, electronic nicotine delivery systems, oceans and human health as well as programs that address how environmental exposures may perturb epigenomic and epitranscriptomic processes. He has worked with trans-NIH programs as well as leading components of Common Fund supported initiatives as well as working across agencies such as the NSF, FDA, CDC and NOAA to advance environmental health science research priorities.  

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in 153 million infections and 3.2 million deaths as of May 2021. While effective vaccines are being administered globally, there is still a great need for antiviral therapies as potentially antigenically distinct SARS-CoV-2 variants continue to emerge across the globe. Viruses require host factors at every step in their life cycle, representing a rich pool of candidate targets for antiviral drug design. To identify host factors that promote SARS-CoV-2 infection with potential for broad-spectrum activity across the coronavirus family, we carried out a collaborative effort with Dr. Michel Norris and Dr. Stephanie Karst to perform genome-scale CRISPR knockout screens in two cell lines (Vero E6 and HEK293T ectopically expressing ACE2) with SARS-CoV-2 and the common cold-causing human coronavirus OC43. We identified multiple genes and functional pathways that have been previously reported to promote human coronavirus replication as well as novel genes and pathways. Of note, host factors involved in cell cycle regulation were enriched in our screens as were several key components of the programmed mRNA decay pathway. We identified novel candidate antiviral compounds targeting a number of factors revealed by our screens. Our studies substantiate and expand the growing body of literature focused on understanding key human coronavirus-host cell interactions and exploit that knowledge for rational antiviral drug development. 

Identifying and preventing environmental causes of disease requires estimating long-term personal exposures. Most environmental exposures do not have valid biomarkers and studies therefore rely on external exposure assessment methods.  Approaches are split broadly into methods for modeling exposures for large populations versus measuring exposures for small populations. New technologies and resulting big data offer tremendous opportunity for unifying these approaches and improving long-term personal exposure prediction at scales needed for population-based research.  In this presentation I will provide examples from ongoing research projects, such as: (1) leveraging existing individual time-activity data from Google Location History to estimate long-term environment exposures; (2) integrating image-based deep learning models to assess environmental exposures; and (3) applying new air pollution sensors to large epidemiological studies. I will make the case that a multi-disciplinary approach is needed to combine these types of technologies to improve personal exposure measures, enhance epidemiological research, and identify new prevention opportunities.