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Alison Harrill is leading
efforts toward developing models that incorporate host genetic susceptibility
into risk assessment. Genetics plays a key role in metabolism and response to
drugs and chemicals, yet the systematic study of population dynamics in
toxicity responses is in its infancy and understanding these dynamics may have
important implications for human health risk assessment. Her current research
includes investigation of population dynamics in response to drugs and
chemicals, identification of gene variants that influence toxicity responses,
and study of different transcriptional alterations that occur in affected
tissues of sensitive versus resistant individuals. These efforts will take aim
at reducing uncertainty when extrapolating risk from animal species to human
populations.
Prior to joining the
NTP, Harrill was an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas for
Medical Sciences and, prior to her academic tenure, Head of the Translational
Pharmacogenetics Laboratory at the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences. In
these roles, she worked to qualify population-based rodent models, such as
Diversity Outbred mice, for pharmaceutical safety testing and identification of
pharmacogenetics toxicity risk factors that might enable precision medicine
strategies. In addition, she has led safety biomarker discovery and
qualification efforts that translated from animal species to clinical
populations, with particular emphasis on liver and kidney injury biomarkers.
Harrill received her
Ph.D. in Toxicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and
her B.S. in Genetic Engineering from Cedar Crest College (Allentown, PA). She
currently serves as a co-chair on the Application of Genomics for Risk
Assessment Committee of ILSI/HESI, a member of the Contemporary Concepts in
Toxicology Committee within the Society of Toxicology, and an executive
committee member within the Toxicology Division of the American Society for
Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. She has been honored to receive
many awards for her research, most recently: The Best Paper Published in
Toxicological Sciences Award (2016) and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Innovation
in Regulatory Sciences Award (2013-2016).