SCEHSC Seminar with Jesus Araujo, MD, MSC, PhD

Guest Speaker: Jesus Araujo, MD, MSC, PhD

Title: Air Pollution and Mechanisms of Cardiometabolic Toxicity

Date: December 1st 2023

Dr. Araujo is a Physician Scientist and Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA with a dual appointment as Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He directs the Environmental Cardiology and Vascular Biology (ECVB) Laboratory at UCLA focused on studying: 1) Mechanisms of how exposure to ambient particulate matter induces systemic cardiovascular and metabolic effects, 2) Vascular oxidative stress and gene-environment interactions of relevance in the exposure to air pollutants, 3) Cardiopulmonary toxicity of tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes. His laboratory provided the first evidence that ambient ultrafine particles (UFP) promote atherosclerosis together with prooxidative effects in systemic tissues, and the role of systemic expression of Nrf2 and Heme oxygenase (HO-1) on atherosclerosis. Dr. Araujo will be discussing efforts from his laboratory to dissect mechanisms and mediating molecular pathways of how inhaled air pollution leads to the development of systemic cardiometabolic health effects.