Transgenerational studies, mother-child

Research Topic

Environmental factors have been shown to play a crucial role in the development of various diseases like allergies, overweight/obesity or behaviour disorders. External factors such as chemicals, pathogens or stress may act as drivers of the individual’s risk to develop diseases and as triggers of underlying genetic predispositions. Recent findings indicate that in particular the prenatal and early postnatal period appears critical to environmental exposures, probably interfering with the developmental programming of the immune system or the physiological endocrine and metabolic signalling. Using cross- and transgenerational mouse models, if possible in a translational approach by combination with epidemiological data (Platform Cohorts) and additional in vitro or ex vivo cell culture models (Platform Cell Culture Models, Scientific Theme Nutritional Immunology), we want to explore the effects of early chemical exposures on disease development in later life and to characterize the underlying mechanisms. These findings may contribute to identify crucial disease risks and to develop new prevention strategies.

Research design: Findings from the prospective birth cohort studies were used to establish hypothesis driven approaches in human and mouse in vitro studies. Based on these results overall mechanistic analyses were addressed in the mouse in vivo settings.

Team

Working Group Leader

PD Dr. Tobias Polte

Team members

Bingyu Wang

Maik Schilde

Marita Wagner