Food and Molecular Toxicology

We are developing methods and strategies to rapidly detect hazardous chemical contaminants in drinking water. The methods that we are working with are based on mammalian cells that we can culture in the laboratory and use as sensors to detect toxic substances in the water samples that we analyze. The great strength of these methods is that they measure the total toxicity of the samples we analyze and thus take into account both known and unknown substances as well as the mixture effects that can occur when we are exposed to many substances at the same time.