Regina Santella
researcher
Regina Maria (Padronaggio) Santella (born 1948) is an American environmental scientist who is an emeritus professor at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She used molecular epidemiology studies and laboratory assays to understand the role of environmental, lifestyle and occupational carcinogens in cancer development as well as to identify susceptible populations. She is the former Director of Columbia's NIEHS Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan, Chair of the American Association for Cancer Research Molecular Epidemiology Working Group and Vice Dean of Faculty at Mailman.
Early life and education
Santella was an undergraduate at Brooklyn College. She moved to the University of Massachusetts Amherst for graduate studies, where she specialized in organic chemistry. Her doctoral research, which she performed at the City University of New York, investigated the interaction of proteins with DNA.
Research and career
Santella has studied how environmental chemicals primarily polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), ubiquitous pollutants, and aflatoxin, a dietary toxin produced by a mold, cause cancer. She has enabled precise carcinogen detection through highly specific and sensitive immunoassays. These assays use monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies developed by Santella to measure DNA and protein binding of the carcinogens to produce adducts as well metabolites of the carcinogens in urine. One of the first studies demonstrated that women who smoke had higher levels of PAH-DNA damage in their placental tissue than nonsmokers. Later studies revealed elevated DNA damage in people with environmental, occupational or lifestyle exposures.
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This entry incorporates text from “Regina Santella” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.