Researcher Receives Marie Curie Prize for Work on Hormesis

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" Hormesis is a term used by toxicologists to refer to a biphasic dose

response to an environmental agent characterized by a low dose stimulation or

beneficial effect and a high dose inhibitory or toxic effect. In the fields

of biology and medicine hormesis is defined as an adaptive response of cells

and organisms to a moderate (usually intermittent) stress....As a result,

cells increase their production of cytoprotective and restorative proteins

including growth factors, phase 2 and antioxidant enzymes, and protein

chaperones. A better understanding of hormesis mechanisms at the cellular and

molecular levels is leading to and to novel approaches for the prevention

and treatment of many different diseases. " Hormesis Defined

_http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2248601_

(http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2248601)

UMass Amherst Researcher Calabrese Receives Marie Curie Prize for

Work on Hormesis, Low-Dose Radiation and Health

May 1, 2009

Contact: _Ed Blaguszewski_ (mailto:edblag@...)

413/545-0444

....Calabrese is the foremost expert in the world on a chemical

dose-response phenomenon known as hormesis,

....What I have urged all along is for mainstream science to see hormesis

as a basic biological principle.â€

.....By contrast, the prevailing linear threshold model of toxin behavior

says the absence of harmful effects below the threshold assumes there are no

effects relevant to health.

....the two leading risk assessment models used by the Environmental

Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration have been imposed on

society and the scientific community without being vetted or validated.

AMHERST, Mass. – Calabrese, a professor in the School of Public

Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has

been awarded the Marie Curie Prize for “outstanding achievements in research

on the effects of low and very low doses of ionizing radiation on human

health and biotopes.â€

At an international conference this week at UMass Amherst, Andre Maisseu,

president of the Paris-based World Council of Nuclear Workers, announced

that Calabrese is the council’s 2009 Curie Prize winner. Maisseu saluted

Calabrese during the annual meeting of the International Dose-Response Society,

of which Calabrese, an environmental toxicologist, is a founder and

current director. Maisseu said the prize recognizes an entire body of research

that has improved scientific knowledge of low-dose ionizing radiation effects

on human beings and biological communities. A formal award ceremony will

be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in September.

While Calabrese is the foremost expert in the world on a chemical

dose-response phenomenon known as hormesis, he has done little dose-response

work

with ionizing radiation, he observes. However, he feels deeply honored by

the council’s recognition. “I accept that I’m being given credit for

bridging

the gap between chemical hormesis and ionizing radiation,†he says, “and

I do believe there is evidence to bridge it. What I have urged all along is

for mainstream science to see hormesis as a basic biological principle.â€

Hormesis describes the fact that low doses of some chemicals are

stimulative or promote growth but higher doses are toxic or inhibit growth, for

example. The Marie Curie Prize winner, who joined the UMass Amherst faculty in

1976, says, “We need to conduct the research―which has been long

neglected―

to understand hormesis more fully, with all its implications.â€

The theory’s proponents suggest that low doses of minerals in multivitamin

pills such as chromium and selenium, for example, boost health not because

they provide required nutrients but because low doses of many toxins

stimulate biological systems with beneficial mild stress, while higher doses

are

toxic. By contrast, the prevailing linear threshold model of toxin

behavior says the absence of harmful effects below the threshold assumes there

are

no effects relevant to health.

Calabrese and colleagues’ work on chemical hormesis sparked vigorous

scientific debate and a special section in the journal, Science, in 1989.

Challenged to subject hormesis experiments to more rigorous statistical

standards, Calabrese and his longtime UMass Amherst collaborator, Baldwin,

created a database of 21,000 papers. In 2003, they reported in a

ground-breaking paper that the low-dose stimulatory effect of chemicals is

typically

about 40 percent enhanced growth, for example.

“It was a coming-out party for hormesis,†Calabrese recalls. “We made a

credible case and we did it by following the scientific rules of the game,â€

he says of their work over the past 30 years. By contrast, he says, the two

leading risk assessment models used by the Environmental Protection Agency

and the Food and Drug Administration have been imposed on society and the

scientific community without being vetted or validated.

Everyday implications of hormesis for risk assessment are significant. If

chemical hormesis is a basic biological principle, Calabrese says, society

is needlessly over-regulating the environment to protect against low

exposures that are not dangerous, and we’re missing possible benefits. “The

traditional threshold model is not very good at explaining or accounting for

data that’s below the toxic threshold, and that’s where we live. But

hormesis

is quite good at that.â€

Major Implications for Public Health Policy

Mark Mattson, chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National

Institute on Aging, one of Calabrese’s past co-authors, agrees that the

findings for which Calabrese is being recognized with the Marie Curie Prize

“have

major implications for public health policy regarding environmental ‘

toxins,’ for the design of biomedical studies, and for the discovery of new

therapeutic interventions for a range of diseases.â€

Mattson adds that the UMass Amherst research clearly reveals that “

hormesis as a widespread feature of biological systems (cells, tissues,

organisms

and populations) that was previously either unrecognized or ignored by

scientists in the fields of biology, biomedical research and toxicology.

Calabrese and colleagues have shown that biological systems very often respond

adaptively to low amounts of toxins and other stresses (radiation, heat,

etc.) so as to increase their resistance to more severe stress and disease.â€

Maisseu says it’s unfortunate that most research on ionizing radiation

conducted since nuclear weapons were developed has focused on its harmfulness.

This has prevented valuable work on possible beneficial low-dose effects,

including adaption and repair mechanisms, he feels. Further, anti-hormesis

prejudice has deprived the scientific community of fundamental knowledge

which might be uncovered, and which is needed to pursue the fight against the

different forms of cancer, Maisseu adds.

He therefore salutes Calabrese’s “courageous opposition to this

indefensible position with regard to scientific research.†Recalling the

famous

statement by the 15th century toxicologist, Paracelsus, that all substances are

poison and only dose makes a poison, Maisseu adds, “Calabrese dared to

undertake work making it possible to correctly appreciate the relationship

between dose and effect in many areas of toxicology and biology, and to

highlight numerous examples of the hormesis phenomenon.â€

Calabrese can be reached directly at 413/545-3164 or

edwardc@....

More Information

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