Human Health

A PNNL and national priority

EMSL Researcher Josie Eder prepares brain total lipid extracts for LCMS (liquid chromatography mass spectrometry) quality control analysis.

(Image by Andrea Starr | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

Scientific advancements have redefined the face of human health. Where there was once treatment of symptoms and guesswork about the cause of disease, there is now prevention and prediction of disease onset.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) biomedical researchers study cancer biology, infectious diseases caused by viruses or bacteria, and other diseases, including diabetes and its link to inflammation.

With a better understanding of pathways that maintain or degrade human health, our work informs disease treatment and early detection. It also provides information to guide strategies to mitigate potential health impacts from environmental exposures to chemicals or air pollution. Many of the fundamental systems and networks that human health research explores connect to and complement biological systems that are critical to United States advances in bioenergy and the bioeconomy.

Working collaboratively across the biological science sectors speeds the application of innovations developed in a single sector to broader contexts, rapidly deploying advancements from biomedicine to bioenergy and vice versa. Because our biological expertise is so broad, PNNL can shift research priorities in response to changing national needs, from confronting the epidemic of chronic illnesses to speeding up drug discovery.

Advanced ion mobility mass spectrometry and enhanced mass spectrometers at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory provide increased sensitivity, precision, and speed for analyzing blood or tissue samples. Our scientists specialize in the development and use of omics technologies, such as metabolomics, lipidomics, and nanoscale proteomics, to gain an unprecedented look at cellular function at the molecular level. The result is massive amounts of data. Interpreting this valuable data is enabled by advanced artificial intelligence and PNNL’s powerful computational tools.

PNNL’s biomedical research helps anchor the Laboratory’s biology capabilities and complements its Earth systems research. Whether our researchers are studying the human body or the role of a microbial ecosystem in Earth-energy systems, they dissect the inner workings of biological systems one molecule and one process at a time.

Collaborations

PNNL researchers collaborate with dozens of internal and external partners to advance human health.

Pacific northwest bioMedical Innovation Co-laboratory—or PMedIC—is a joint research collaboration of the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and PNNL. PMedIC aims to generate, interpret, and integrate multidimensional omics and imaging data with clinical results to gain mechanistic understanding of disease and develop innovative therapies.

The Pacific Northwest Center for Cryo-EM (PNCC) is a state-of-the-art electron microscopy user facility funded by the National Institutes of Health Common Fund and operated jointly by the Oregon Healthy & Science University and PNNL. Its mission is to serve researchers from a diverse range of backgrounds to tackle the most challenging scientific problems and to train the next generation of cryo-electron microscopy specialists and users.