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SOT Members Invited to Virtual Town Hall with Visit Orlando

By Dori Germolec posted 5 hours ago
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During its meeting in January 2024, SOT Council met with Visit Orlando to discuss concerns expressed by SOT members about how safe attendees of the 64th Annual Meeting and ToxExpo will be based on Florida legislative actions in recent years. Council felt that it was extremely helpful to be able to discuss these topics directly with Visit Orlando and receive more detailed information about the state of affairs in the city. As a result, Council is giving this opportunity to the SOT membership by hosting a webinar on April 30 at 1:00 pm (US EDT, UTC -4) featuring guests from Visit Orlando to address any questions or concerns of SOT leaders and members. You ...
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Get Feedback on Your 2025 Session Proposal before You Have to Submit the Final Version

By Cynthia Rider posted 5 hours ago
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When considering which Scientific Session and Continuing Education course proposals to accept for the SOT Annual Meeting and ToxExpo, endorsement of the proposal is an important factor. These endorsements can come from SOT Component Groups as well as SOT Committees. For example, Roundtables and Education-Career Development Sessions are often endorsed by Special Interest Groups and Committees as opposed to Specialty Sections. To make sure proposals are as strong as they can be, many endorsing groups will pre-review session proposals to provide feedback that can be incorporated into a proposal before it is officially submitted to the SPC by the May 15 deadline. ...
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It Takes a Village: Insights from the 2024 NPA Annual Conference in Seattle

By Olawande Olagoke posted 5 hours ago
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Dr. Olawande Olagoke at the 2024 NPA Annual Conference As the airliner descended into the Seattle skyline, the picturesque background of the popular medical TV show set in the Emerald City came to mind. Luckily, it wasn’t pouring rain, so the Space Needle stood out among the architectural marvels between Lake Washington and Elliot Bay. Shortly before Grey’s Anatomy played its role in cementing Seattle on the pop-culture map, a committee of postdoc reps across America came together at the Science’s NextWave Postdoc Network in Washington, DC, in 2002 with the goal of “improving the postdoctoral experience.” The National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) was ...
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Kimberly Hodge-Bell, Eric McDuffie, and Kathryn Page Have Been Elected to the SOT Membership Committee

By James Luyendyk posted 5 hours ago
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SOT is pleased to showcase the three newly elected members of the Membership Committee: Kimberly C. Hodge-Bell, PhD, DABT; J. Eric McDuffie, PhD; and Kathryn E. Page, PhD, DABT. The Membership Committee is charged with examining the qualifications of the candidates for membership at least four times per year and shall report its recommendations to the Executive Director. Kimberly C. Hodge-Bell Dr. Hodge-Bell is a scientific strategic leader with a career focused on risk assessment and risk-based defense. She provides toxicology support regarding scientific human health risk assessment principles for new and existing products to enable successful ...
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2024 Annual Meeting Report: Exploring Cannabis Use During Pregnancy and Its Impact on Reproduction and Development

By Meaghan Loy posted 5 hours ago
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During the 2024 SOT Annual Meeting and ToxExpo, a Symposium Session titled “Looking through the Haze: Is the Picture Any Clearer on the Effects of Cannabis and Cannabis-Related Products on Reproduction & Development?” provided a platform for an in-depth exploration of the intricate landscape of cannabis use during pregnancy and its impact on reproductive and developmental outcomes. Led by esteemed researchers and experts in the field, the Symposium delved into various aspects, from epidemiology and molecular mechanisms to translational approaches and systematic data mapping studies. Attendees were presented with comprehensive insights and cutting-edge research ...
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2024 Annual Meeting Report: How Metal Mix Exposures Are Shaping Human Health

By Ruth Meletz posted 5 hours ago
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The intricate biological interactions between humans and their environments have long been a subject of concern. Our lives have become entwined with an ever-expanding array of chemical compounds. Yet, despite this pervasive exposure, our understanding of how these chemicals interact within our bodies remains far from comprehensive. Traditionally, toxicology has largely focused on studying the effects of individual chemicals, and standards and regulations designed to protect human health have predominantly relied on data derived from single chemical exposures. However, this approach fails to capture the complex reality of our everyday lives, where we ...
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Patrick Allard, Brittany L. Baisch, Suzanne E. Fenton, Erin P. Hines, and Jacqueline Kinyamu-Akunda Have Been Elected to the SOT Awards Committee

By James Luyendyk posted 7 days ago
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SOT is pleased to showcase the five newly elected members of the Awards Committee: Patrick Allard, PhD; Brittany L. Baisch, PhD, DABT; Suzanne E. Fenton, PhD; Erin P. Hines, PhD, DABT; and Jacqueline Kinyamu-Akunda, DVM, PhD. The Awards Committee is charged with reviewing all suggestions and recommendations regarding the awards it has been designated by Council to confer and with selecting the recipient or recipients for each award. Patrick Allard Dr. Allard is a recognized scholar, based at University of California Los Angeles, whose work resides at the intersection of toxicology, genetics, and epigenetics. This has been made possible ...
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Science On Demand: A Roundup of SOT Webinar Recordings Released January 1–March 31, 2024

By James Luyendyk posted 7 days ago
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Many of the webinars hosted by SOT Regional Chapters, Special Interest Groups, and Specialty Sections—collectively known as the SOT Component Groups—are recorded and added to the SOT Video Library so that SOT members and others can watch these valuable presentations at any time. SOT Committees, the Postdoctoral Assembly, and Graduate Student Leadership Committee also host webinars that are recorded. In this blog, you will find a listing of all the recent webinar recordings that have been added to the SOT Video Library . Advancing the Science of PFAS Mixtures Assessment Watch Webinar Hosted by: SOT Risk Assessment and Mixtures Specialty Sections ...
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2024 Annual Meeting Report: Can the Microbiome Mediate the Toxicity of Environmental Chemicals?

By Kasey Mohan posted 7 days ago
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The microbiome, often considered to be “the second genome,” has become increasingly recognized as relevant to human health over recent years. The microbiome is composed of bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses. In the gastrointestinal tract, it contributes over 200-thousand unique genomes linked to 171 million proteins, totaling to a microbial cell count of approximately 10^13. Each person is estimated to house several hundred microbial species. Given the complexity of the microbiome, there is much that has yet to be discovered, and uncertainty remains regarding some of its functions that are already known. An example of one such uncertainty is whether the ...
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2024 Annual Meeting Report: Unlocking the RNA Realm: An Introduction to the Intriguing World of lncRNAs

By Ruth Meletz posted 7 days ago
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In the vast world of molecular biology, there is a class of genetic players known as long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs). These molecules, typically spanning over 200 nucleotides in length, make up a huge part of our genome and differ from our traditional genes—they don’t make proteins. Despite this, they have emerged as pivotal regulators in various biological processes, influencing gene expression through diverse mechanisms (i.e., chromatin remodeling, transcriptional and translational regulation, RNA and protein stability modulation, RNA alternative splicing, and protein localization). Recently, scientists have been intrigued by how these lncRNAs may be involved ...
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2024 Annual Meeting Report: Air Pollution, Aging, and Neurocognitive Disease

By Courtney McClure posted 7 days ago
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The world’s population of ages 60 and older is projected to nearly double by the year 2050. This, along with the statistic that seven million people in the US live with dementia, is alarming. The Symposium Session “The State of the Science Linking Environmental Chemicals to Age-Related Neurocognitive Disease” opened with a crash course on air pollution and the complexity of particulate matter as a mixture. With particulate matter, the size of the particles is directly linked to their potential for causing health problems. The mechanism of effect, however, is unknown. The first speaker, Allison Kupsco from Columbia University, introduced extracellular RNA (exRNA) ...
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2025 Session Proposal Site Open with May 15 Deadline—Plus, Gain Proposal Tips during an Upcoming Webinar

By Cynthia Rider posted 14 days ago
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Even though the 2024 Annual Meeting and ToxExpo is barely in the rearview, it’s time to look ahead and begin preparing proposals for Scientific Sessions or Continuing Education courses for the 2025 Annual Meeting and ToxExpo , as the Proposal Submission Site is officially open! To help your preparation, review the preparation and submission instructions on the 2025 Annual Meeting website and plan on attending the webinar “ Developing Competitive Scientific Session Proposals: The Importance of Endorsers ” at 1:00 pm (US EDT, UTC -4) on Thursday, April 11. This webinar is hosted by the SOT Scientific Program Committee and is designed to ...
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SOT Signs MOUs with the Korean Society of Toxicology and American College of Toxicology

By Dori Germolec posted 14 days ago
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I am pleased to announce that SOT recently entered two new Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) to strengthen our ties with toxicologists worldwide. During the SOT Annual Meeting and ToxExpo in Salt Lake City, SOT leadership met with representatives from the Korean Society of Toxicology (KSOT) and co-signed an MOU stating: “At present this agreement is made as a gesture of goodwill between the two societies, which may lead to: Mutual participation in annual meetings Recommendation of invited speakers for joint symposium in annual meetings International collaboration to increase the impact of toxicological science” This formal acknowledgement ...
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Darryl B. Hood Elected as SOT Councilor

By James Luyendyk posted 14 days ago
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Darryl B. Hood, PhD, has been elected by the SOT voting members as an SOT Councilor. Dr. Hood’s passion regarding the importance of teaching, mentoring graduate students, postdocs, and junior faculty in the academy and toxicological research enterprise continues to be undergirded by the declining statistics documenting that less than 0.21% of persons holding PhD degrees in the sciences are from individuals that look like him. During the 32 years of his training at both an underrepresented minority academic health science center and research-intensive R01 institutions, he has grown to have a strong affinity for both learning environments. Making the transition ...
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Agnes L. Karmaus Elected as SOT Councilor

By James Luyendyk posted 14 days ago
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Agnes L. Karmaus, PhD, has been elected by the SOT voting members as an SOT Councilor. Passionate about toxicology, Dr. Karmaus has grown into her career through engagement with SOT. Dr. Karmaus is currently a Senior Computational Toxicologist and Human Safety Project Expert at Syngenta Crop Protection LLC, specializing in the integration of in vitro and computational toxicology in risk assessment context. Her expertise lies in high-throughput screening and predictive toxicology, and her work focuses on developing, evaluating the performance, and integrating alternative approaches to animal testing. Dr. Karmaus has a diverse research background. Having ...
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Apply by April 15 for the 2024 SOT Diversity Initiatives Career Development Award

By Corie Ellison posted 14 days ago
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Ashley Schwartz with the statue of Rachel Carson in Woods Hole, Massachusetts The SOT Committee on Diversity Initiatives encourages undergraduate students and SOT Student members who are members of groups underrepresented in the sciences to apply for the SOT Diversity Initiatives Career Development Award . The SOT Diversity Initiatives Career Development Award enables undergraduate and graduate students to engage in additional education and career development opportunities to enhance their personal development. The SOT Diversity Initiatives Endowment Fund supports this award, which is administered by the SOT Committee on Diversity Initiatives. ...
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Applications Due April 26 for Undergraduates and Mentors to Participate in ToxMSDT, a Year-Long Toxicology Training and Mentoring Experience

By Wilson Rumbeiha posted 14 days ago
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Byline: Wilson Rumbeiha and La Cole Blackshire Our recruitment for mentors and mentees for 2024–2025 is entering its peak, and we are taking this opportunity to remind potential mentees and mentors to send in your applications. The goal of the Toxicology Mentoring and Skills Development Training (ToxMSDT) program is to mentor underrepresented undergraduate students in STEM fields and increase their chances of success in entering toxicology graduate training programs. Ultimately, this will diversify the toxicology workforce. Applications for mentees for the 2024–2025 cohort are due April 26, 2024 . Potential applicants interested in getting ...
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ToxSci April 2024 Issue Available

By Laurie Haws posted 14 days ago
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The April 2024 issue of Toxicological Sciences includes a Contemporary Review that discusses surgical smoke and its components, effects, and mitigation. It also features an In-Depth Review about the emerging role of hypoxia and environmental factors in inflammatory bowel disease, while a Forum article argues that evidence evaluated by EFSA does not support lowering the tolerable daily intake of bisphenol A. Additionally, #ToxSpotlight articles describe how obesogenic polystyrene microplastic exposures disrupt the gut-liver-adipose axis and review cardiotoxicity assessments of bisphenol chemicals and estradiol using human-induced pluripotent stem cell–derived ...
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Thanking the Volunteers of the 35th Annual Undergraduate Diversity Program

By Corie Ellison posted 14 days ago
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2024 Undergraduate Diversity Program cohort The SOT Undergraduate Diversity Program (UDP), planned by the SOT Committee on Diversity Initiatives (CDI), hosted 30 undergraduate students and five faculty advisors during the SOT 63rd Annual Meeting and ToxExpo in Salt Lake City, Utah. This three-day program aims to introduce the principles of toxicology, demonstrate how toxicology influences the world around us, and showcase the research careers available within the field. This was the 35th year of the UDP, and the enduring success of the program is a direct result of the hard work of many dedicated volunteers across the years. In this blog, I, on behalf ...
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Around the World of Toxicology: April 2024 Partner Activities Update

By James Luyendyk posted 14 days ago
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Each month, SOT provides an update on activities and events of importance to the toxicology community through the release of the “Around the World of Toxicology” blog. To submit an event, opportunity, or information for consideration for inclusion in the monthly “Around the World of Toxicology” blog, complete the special submission form for “Around the World of Toxicology” items . Please note that only activities by societies and professional associations (i.e., nonprofits) will be considered. If you are an organization or company seeking to promote an event, please submit your activity to the SOT “ Calendar of Events .” Reminders of Upcoming, Previously ...
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