UMass Amherst-led Cross-disciplinary Research Examines Fertility Impacts of Male Environmental Exposure

A cross-disciplinary team of scientists, led by environmental epigeneticist Richard Pilsner, Models to Medicine, will use a three-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to expand research into the impact of phthalate exposure on male fertility.

The three-year grant is part of the NIEHS initiative known as ViCTER (Virtual Consortium for Translational/Transdisciplinary Environmental Research). The program aims to stimulate unconventional partnerships among environmental health scientists in an effort to accelerate breakthroughs in research.

The new award’s co-investigators are reproductive biologists Pablo Visconti, a UMass Amherst professor of veterinary and animal sciences, and Sarah Kimmins, associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Epigenetics, Reproduction and Development at McGill University in Montreal.

The new grant amplifies the Pilsner Lab’s ongoing research, in both human and mice models, into the influence of phthalate exposure on sperm epigenetics and embryo development, which is supported by two other NIEHS grantstotaling $5 million. The epigenome represents the chemical changes to DNA and histone proteins that affect gene expression and can be passed on to offspring but don’t change the DNA sequence.

“We’ll be able to look at all three epigenetic mechanisms – DNA methylation, histone modifications and small noncoding RNA regulation – to build a roadmap, or epigenetic profile, of how phthalates are influencing sperm epigenetics and subsequently influencing reproductive success,” Pilsner says.