Environmental Stressors and OxInflammatory Tissues Responses

Giuseppe Valacchi, PhD, is David H. Murdock Distinguished Professor and Professor of Regenerative Medicine at the North Carolina State University. In addition, he is Professor of Physiology at the University of Ferrara, Adjunct Professor at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea and President Elect for the SFRR-Europe. He earned his PhD in Cellular Physiology and Neuro-Immunophysiology from the University of Siena, Italy, followed by postdoctoral training at the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California-Berkeley and at the Pulmonary Division, University of California-Davis, and as Senior Researcher in the Department of Nutrition, University of California-Davis. Dr. Valacchi’s research focuses on the effect of pollution (ozone, ultraviolet radiation, particulate matter and cigarette smoke) on target organs with emphasis on skin and also lung and gastrointestinal tract. His research significantly contributed to the mechanism and the possible protection of skin towards ozone exposure and more in general to the OxInflammatory responses, including NLRP1 and NLRP3 inflammasome activation, induced by pollution exposure.

Andreas Daiber, PhD, earned his PhD in Biological Chemistry from the University of Konstanz and completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Konstanz and Experimental Cardiology, University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf and University Medical Center, Mainz, Germany, where he now is Professor and Head of Molecular Cardiology. In 2011 he was appointed a guest professorship at University of Grenoble, France, where he worked on protein nitration and redox-activation of sources of oxidative stress (crosstalk of NADPH oxidases and mitochondria) with Professor Schlattner. From 2014-2016, he was the chair of the European COST Action EU-ROS, a network of excellence with more than 230 participating scientists, dedicated to the mechanistic understanding and therapeutic exploitation of redox biological pathways and antioxidant pharmacological approaches. Dr. Daiber has a longtime research interest in oxidative stress-related cardiovascular disease and redox-regulation of vascular function. More recently, he investigates the effects of environmental stressors such as traffic noise and particulate matter on cardiovascular and metabolic function in humans and model organisms and has identified oxidative stress and inflammation as central players in mediating vascular dysfunction as well as (non-)pharmacological mitigation strategies related to antioxidant response such as NRF2 activation, exercise and fasting.