Abstract
World Trade Center (WTC) responders were exposed to mixture of dust, smoke, chemicals and carcinogens. New York University (NYU) and Mount Sinai have recreated WTC exposure in rodents to observe the resulting systemic and local biological responses. These experiments aid in the interpretation of epidemiological observations and are useful for understanding the carcinogenesis process in the exposed human WTC cohort. Here we describe the implementation of a tissue bank system for the rodents experimentally exposed to WTC dust. NYU samples were experimentally exposed to WTC dust via intratracheal inhalation that mimicked conditions in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Tissue from Mount Sinai was derived from genetically modified mice exposed to WTC dust via nasal instillation. All processed tissues include annotations of the experimental design, WTC dust concentration/dose, exposure route and duration, genetic background of the rodent, and method of tissue isolation/storage. A biobank of tissue from rodents exposed to WTC dust has been compiled representing an important resource for the scientific community. The biobank remains available as a scientific resource for future research through established mechanisms for samples request and utilization. Studies using the WTC tissue bank would benefit from confirming their findings in corresponding tissues from organs of animals experimentally exposed to WTC dust. Studies on rodent tissues will advance the understanding of the biology of the tumors developed by WTC responders and ultimately impact the modalities of treatment, and the probability of success and survival of WTC cancer patients.
Highlights
The World Trade Center (WTC) disaster resulted in a large cloud of dust containing a mixture of toxic chemicals such as soot, benzene/other volatile organic compounds, asbestos, silica, cement dust, glass fibers, heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and polychlorinated dibenzofurans and dioxins [1,2,3].The health consequences of exposure to these chemicals were both acute and chronic [4,5,6]
From New York University (NYU), this includes biosamples from male spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) rats exposed to ISO, air, or the indicated WTC dust concentrations collected at various intervals over a 1-year post-exposure period (Table 1)
We present here the first tissue bank of rodents derived from WTC exposure laboratory experiments
Summary
The World Trade Center (WTC) disaster resulted in a large cloud of dust containing a mixture of toxic chemicals such as soot, benzene/other volatile organic compounds, asbestos, silica, cement dust, glass fibers, heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and polychlorinated dibenzofurans and dioxins [1,2,3].The health consequences of exposure to these chemicals were both acute and chronic [4,5,6]. Long-term follow-up of WTC responders has shown an increase in cancer incidence over time [8,9,10], possibly related to the presence of multiple known/ suspected human carcinogens in the dust cloud [11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. This observation prompted the creation of a solid cancer tissue bank to supplement the current epidemiologic studies on cancer occurrence [18]. Establishing a central repository of these tissues allows investigators to better elucidate connections between WTC dust exposures and cancer etiology/progression among first responders in Lieberman‐Cribbin et al J Transl Med (2019) 17:342 comparison to other individuals with cancer who were not exposed to the WTC dusts
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