MEDICAL CANNABIS

Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute 

Professor Gochfeld serves as Director of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute for the State of New Jersey and heads its Center for Public Health and Preparedness. Professor Gochfedl holds a Ph.D. in Medicine, Biology and Environmental Health Sciences - Chemical Relationships to Disease. His CV contains over 250 recognized articles in peer-reviewed academic journals and 50 book chapter publications. 

 Professor Gochfeld’s work extends to current State and Homeland Security projects advising on biological, chemical and radiological weapon readiness as asserted upon emergency responding physicians and nurses.

Research Highlights

• Participation in an EPA Environmental Justice Symposium resulted in exploration of the importance of outliers in risk management and the importance of occupational exposures as part of a comprehensive Environmental Justice paradigm.
• The role of selenium in protecting against mercury toxicity has been known for 40 years, but the mechanism(s) of the interaction remain unclear. This study examines whether the Se:Hg molar ratio predicts mercury toxicity from fish consumption.

Scholarly Activities

• Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine: Chair of Curriculum Committee
• Robert Wood Johnson Medical School: M1 Block Directors Committee
• Special Committee on Health, Productivity, and Disability Management, American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
• Chair Committee on History of OSHA Permissible Exposure Limits

Research Areas

My main area of research has focused on heavy metals exposure and effect. The current emphasis is on the relationship between mercury and selenium exposure and balancing the risks against benefits of fish consumption. Much of this work involves Native American and Alaskan Native communities.

A second area focuses on the environmental consequences of energy options, examining nuclear options in the light of the spent nuclear fuel impasse and the Fukushima disaster vs unintended consequences of renewable energy. This has been developed as an outgrowth of our CRESP work on hazardous waste, risk management, and land use decisions with the U.S. Department of Energy.

A third area focuses on incorporating workplace health and safety equity into the EPA’s “Environmental Justice” paradigm.

Recent Publications

1. Soskolne, CL, Kramer, S, Ramos-Bonilla, JP, Mandrioli, D, Sass, J, Gochfeld, M, Cranor, CF, Advani, S, Bero, LA. Toolkit for detecting misused epidemiological methods. Environ Health. 2021;20 (1):90. doi: 10.1186/s12940-021-00771-6. PubMed PMID:34412643 PubMed Central PMC8375462
2. Lynch, RM, Favata, E, Gochfeld, M. Assess Ventilation When Determining Safe Distancing in Schools to Control Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Transmission. Clin Infect Dis. 2021;73 (6):e1404-e1405. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciab353. PubMed PMID:33895816 PubMed Central PMC8135657
3. Burger, J, Gochfeld, M, Bunn, A, Looney, B, Jeitner, C. Role of uncertainties in protecting ecological resources during remediation and restoration. J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2021;84 (12):485-502. doi: 10.1080/15287394.2021.1887783. PubMed PMID:33632081
4. Gochfeld, M, Burger, J. Mercury interactions with selenium and sulfur and the relevance of the Se:Hg molar ratio to fish consumption advice. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2021;28 (15):18407-18420. doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-12361-7. PubMed PMID:33507504 PubMed Central PMC8026698
5. Burger, J, Gochfeld, M. Biomonitoring selenium, mercury, and selenium:mercury molar ratios in selected species in Northeastern US estuaries: risk to biota and humans. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2021;28 (15):18392-18406. doi: 10.1007/s11356-020-12175-z. PubMed PMID:33471308
6. Burger, J, Gochfeld, M. A template of information needs for decision-making about delaying remediation on contaminated lands to protect human health. J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2020;83 (10):379-394. doi: 10.1080/15287394.2020.1763221. PubMed PMID:32501180
7. Burger, J, Gochfeld, M, Kosson, DS, Brown, KG, Salisbury, JA, Jeitner, C. Risk to ecological resources following remediation can be due mainly to increased resource value of successful restoration: A case study from the Department of Energy's Hanford Site. Environ Res. 2020;186 :109536. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2020.109536. PubMed PMID:32344209
8. Gaitens, JM, Potter, BK, D'Alleyrand, JG, Overmann, AL, Gochfeld, M, Smith, DR, Breyer, R, McDiarmid, MA. The management of embedded metal fragment patients and the role of chelation Therapy: A workshop of the Department of Veterans Affairs-Walter Reed National Medical Center. Am J Ind Med. 2020;63 (5):381-393. doi: 10.1002/ajim.23098. PubMed PMID:32144801
9. Burger, J, Gochfeld, M, Kosson, DS, Brown, KG, Salisbury, J, Jeitner, C. A paradigm for protecting ecological resources following remediation as a function of future land use designations: a case study for the Department of Energy's Hanford Site. Environ Monit Assess. 2020;192 (3):181. doi: 10.1007/s10661-020-8084-x. PubMed PMID:32065319
10. Burger, J, Gochfeld, M, Jeitner, C. Importance of buffer lands to determining risk to ecological resources at legacy contaminated sites: A case study for the Department of Energy's Hanford Site, Washington, USA. J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2019;82 (22):1151-1163. doi: 10.1080/15287394.2019.1702911. PubMed PMID:31852396

Professor Lambert formerly served as head of Pathology and Research at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark, New Jersey. Dr. Lambert is also former Director of Advanced Research Sciences at NATO. He holds PhD's in Medicine, Dermatology, Immunodermatopatholgy, Pathology, and Immunopathology. Dr. Lamberts's CV includes over 400 recognized medical publications as well as Directorship's of many National and International Advanced Research programs. 

These programs are precursors to treatment methodologies, immunopathogenesis, pharmaceutical or biological therapies and advancements in continuing research of numerous known and newly discovered immunosuppressant diseases. His research includes; Cellular mechanisms for genomic instability / Molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration and Cancer predisposition/DNA repair deficiency syndromes: Xeroderma Pigmentosum, Fanconi Anemia and Cockayne Syndrome, the identification and research being the "Thymus By-pass Model" and Basic Mechanisms of Physiologic and Aberrant Lymphoproliferations of the Skin, just to reference a few.

We would be remiss not to mention our pride in the professor’s kindness and levity as a “Camp Sundown Clown” for the Xeroderma Pigmentosum Society.

Dr. Pere Gascon Vilaplana, has been a lecturer in the University of Barcelona since 2009 and coordinator of Onclogy Clinic since 2003. He is also the director of the Medical Oncology and Scientific Coordinator of the 'Clinical Institute of HematoOncological Diseases (ICMHO) at the Hospital Clinic de Barcelona. 

In 1974 he obtained the title of Graduate in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Barcelona and is named Non-permanent Professor in the Chair of Pharmacology and Clinical Therapeutics of the Faculty of Medicine of the same institution.  In 1975 he moved to the United States to continue his scientific and clinical training. For two years he worked as an associate researcher at the Department of Pharmacology of the New York University Medical Center, where he worked with the Spanish Nobel Prize Professor Severo Ochoa, where he was to announce the award. In this institution, considered among the 5 best Faculties of Medicine of the United States, he worked with Prof. José Musacchio, a former disciple of Professor Julius Axelrod, Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1970. From the results of these investigations, his doctoral thesis on encephalic-endorphin arises, part of which was published in the journal Science. His academic background will be completed as of the year 1977 in public hospitals of the Brooklyn Downstate Medical Center system in New York, to later go to the National Institutes of Health of Bethesda (NIH), at the Clinical Hematology Branch. This institution is considered the most important in the world in biomedicine. Dr. Gascón was chosen from hundreds of American candidates who appeared after an announcement appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine to cover a clinic, an extremely competitive and prestigious place, every year only 6 candidates are selected in the country . Dr. Gascón was the first Spanish in the history of the NIH to be a Clinical Associate. It is estimated that more than 30 American Nobel Prizes have been Research or Clinical Associates of the NIH, at moments of his life. In this prestigious institution he was chosen for merit competition and after undergoing 16 interviews with scientists such as: Marshal Nirenberg, Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1968, Bruce Chabner (Director of Pharmacology of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and currently chairman of the Massachusetts Department of Medicine’s General Hospital, the Harvard Medical School’s university hospital, Robert Young (Director, Medical Oncology Branch, NCI), Eli Glastein (Director, Radiation Oncology, NCI) and Arthur Nienhuis (Director, Hematology Branch, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, NIH). During his years of training at this prestigious institution, they worked on the same campus in April, the Nobel Prizes, in the aforementioned Professor Marshal Niremberg. Professors Julius Axelrod, Nobel Prize for Medicine 1970, Christian B. Anfinsen, Chemistry Nobel Prize 1972 and Carleton Gajdusek, Nobel Prize Medicine 1976. The NIH was trained with the Drs. Arthur Nienhuis and Neal Young (current director of the Clinical Hematology Branch of the NHLBI, NIH).  After four years in this prestigious center, he moved to the Washington University-Barnes Hospital of Saint Louis forming with the Drs. Stuart Kornfeld and Phillip Majerus, both members of the National Academy of Sciences, where he completed his specialization as a hematologist and oncologist. This institution, considered Harvard of Middle West, has given several Nobel Prizes during its history: Carl Ferdinand Cori and Gerty Teresa Ferdinand Cori both Nobel Prize laureates Medicine in 1947, Severo Ochoa, Nobel Prize Medicine 1959, Rita Levi-Montalcini and Stanley Cohen both the 1986 Nobel Medicine Awards.  In 1985, at the age of 36, he joined the faculty of the UMD New Jersey Medical School as Head of the Hematology Service and in 1989 he was promoted to Head of the Hematology-Oncology Division.  In 1991 he obtained the title of Associate Professor with a place of life (tenure) and in 1997 the Full Professor, which is the highest category in the academic world of the United States. It would be equivalent to Full Professor in Spain.  In 1995, he was selected as the New Jersey State Physician by the American College of Physicians. In 1999 and after 24 years in the United States he returned to Spain to take charge of the place he currently occupies in the Hospital Clínic.  He is the author of 161 peer reviewed publications, with an Impact Factor of 823, as well as multiple revisions and book chapters. Dr. Gascón is also a diplomat for the American Board of Internal Medicine in the specialties of Internal Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology. He is also a member of the prestigious Alpha-Omega-Alfa Honor Society, which is the only honor company in the field of medicine in the United States.  Among other charges, by President of the Oncology Section of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, and is currently a member of the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Association against Cancer of Barcelona and member of the Board of Directors of the ” Spanish Association for Research against Cancer (ASEICA). Their scientific contributions in the field of neurotransmitter neuropereptides as well as their role in hematopoietic regulation will be highlighted.  His research has led to the formation of a new field of biology, for which he coined the term "neurohematology". His hypothesis considers that the nervous system, through its innervation in the bone marrow and its soluble factors (neuropeptides / neurotransmitters) regulates blood production. His research has focused on the TAC-I gene and human tachykinins (SP, NK-A). This concept and references to Dr. Gascón appears already in the most important Hematology books of the United States (Williams and Wintrobe).  Another of his contributions has been in the field of myofibrosis. Also, it is monocyte / macrophage theory and TGF-β as a cell and factor involved in the pathogenesis of this disease. Currently, his research focuses on the role of neuropeptides / tachykinins in tumor genesis, having discovered an autocrine regulation in the breast cancer cells mediated by the SP and its NK-I receptor. This finding has led him to postulate an innovative metastatic mechanism to the bone whereby tumor cells would be found in the bone tissue / bone marrow with a favorable environment for implantation that is also regulated by tachykinins and other haematopoietic factors. His theory would also explain why cancer cells may be “hibernating” in certain tissues or organs of the body for years to recover their activity at a given time. His latest research confirms a role of the nervous system (neuropeptides and neurotransmitters) in the development of the tumor process, which has led him to baptize this field of biology as Neuro-Oncology.  His scientific interests in the field of Oncology focuses on the role of microenvironment in the tumor and metastatic process, in the growth factors and their transcription factors involved in the process, and in tumor immunology.