Mount Sinai, Uniformed Services University join forces to predict and prevent diseases before they start

Multidisciplinary study uses blood samples to identify disease years early, including cancers, heart disease, and autoimmune disorders

The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine

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NEW YORK, NY (March 2, 2026)—What if doctors could tell you a disease was coming years before you felt a single symptom—and stop it in its tracks? That is the goal of a sweeping new research initiative launched by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in collaboration with the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine (HJF).

The project, called “ORIGIN: Omics to Characterize Preclinical Stages of Non-Infectious Diseases,” brings together 10 specialties across Mount Sinai Health System in an ambitious multidisciplinary disease-prevention study.

The study will analyze stored blood samples from up to 13,000 active-duty U.S. service members, drawn years before any diagnosis, using advanced molecular “omics” tools such as proteomics, exposomics, metabolomics, genomics, and more. By identifying risk factors and early warning signals, ORIGIN aims to lay the groundwork for predicting and ultimately preventing some of today’s most common and devastating diseases.

A Decade of Partnership, Now Expanded to a Global Scale

“For years, we have dreamed of being able to tell a patient: ‘We see this coming, and here is what we can do about it,’” said Jean-Frédéric Colombel, MD, Professor of Medicine (Gastroenterology) and Co-Director, The Helmsley Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Co-Principal Investigator, ORIGIN. “ORIGIN is the realization of that dream. By studying the blood of service members years before they get sick, we can map the molecular road to disease and ultimately develop tools to change course. This is medicine at its most proactive, and it could benefit not just military families, but every American.”

For more than a decade, Dr. Colombel has partnered with USU researchers to study inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in military personnel using the Department of Defense Serum Repository (DoDSR), which contains millions of longitudinal blood samples. Their research identified molecular signals in the blood years before IBD was diagnosed.

ORIGIN dramatically expands that model. Where the earlier effort focused on one disease, ORIGIN will study more than 25 conditions simultaneously, including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, neurodegenerative disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), colon cancer, lung cancer, and heart failure. The effort is powered by the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai (PrIISM), whose cross-disciplinary model is specifically designed to break down the walls that traditionally separate medical specialties—enabling cardiologists, immunologists, neurologists, oncologists, and environmental and data scientists to work as one team.

Why the Military? A Unique Window Into Human Health

U.S. military service members receive comprehensive, routine health monitoring from the moment they enlist, creating an extraordinary long-term medical record that is unlike anything available in the civilian world. The DoDSR holds serial blood samples from millions of service members, many collected a decade or more before any illness emerged. For researchers, this is a scientific treasure.

ORIGIN will use this resource to answer questions that have never been answerable before, including:

• What is happening in the body five years before someone is diagnosed with lupus?
• What molecular changes precede early-onset colon cancer—a disease on the rise in younger adults—by three years?
• How do military-specific environmental exposures like burn pits and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS, aka “forever chemicals,” which are found at more than 700 U.S. military sites) alter the body’s biology and raise disease risk?

USU’s data analysts will select and match cases and controls from the Military Health System Data Repository, coordinate with the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division to deidentify all records, and ensure the proper governance and security of the data and serum before it is shared with the Mount Sinai research team for analysis.

“The men and women warfighters of this country deserve cutting-edge medical care,” said Daniel J. Adams, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at USU and USU’s Principal Investigator for ORIGIN. “Our collaboration with Mount Sinai directly advances our USU mission to support the readiness, health, and well-being of our military community, using the unparalleled resource of the DoD Serum Repository to decode the early biology of chronic diseases. The insights from ORIGIN will help us protect service members today and advance medicine for decades to come.”

Breaking Medical Silos: The PrIISM Approach

One of the most exciting aspects of ORIGIN is the way it is structured. ORIGIN is designed to break from the traditional model of studying one disease at a time. Instead, 10 departments across Mount Sinai Health System are collaborating under PrIISM to look for shared biological pathways across different conditions.

Using advanced “omics” technologies, researchers will analyze proteins, metabolites, environmental exposures, and immune responses from blood samples, integrating these data through sophisticated computational modeling. By uncovering common molecular roots of disease, the team hopes to develop treatments and prevention strategies that work across multiple conditions—and ultimately reclassify illness based on molecular biology rather than the organ it affects.

“ORIGIN is exactly the kind of bold, boundary-breaking science that PrIISM was built to support,” said Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, Director, PrIISM, and Mount Sinai’s Co-Principal Investigator for ORIGIN. “By uniting 10 departments and bridging the worlds of military medicine and academic research, we are creating something entirely new—a molecular atlas of how disease begins. The potential to prevent illness before it starts, and to rewrite how we classify and treat dozens of conditions, is truly transformative for patients everywhere.”

A Study With Real-World Impact

The study timeline covers samples collected between October 2003 and September 2025, and the project is expected to run for at least 10 years—with findings that could reshape clinical guidelines, drug development, and public health policy for generations.

Diseases targeted by ORIGIN include conditions that are increasingly common among younger Americans, such as early-onset colon cancer, PTSD, and Crohn’s disease, making its findings urgently relevant far beyond the military community.

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About the Mount Sinai Health System 

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with 48,000 employees working across seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, more than 600 research and clinical labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time—discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it. 

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 9,000 primary and specialty care physicians and 10 free-standing joint-venture centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida. Hospitals within the System are consistently ranked by Newsweek’s® “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals, Best in State Hospitals, World Best Hospitals and Best Specialty Hospitals” and by U.S. News & World Report's® “Best Hospitals” and “Best Children’s Hospitals.” The Mount Sinai Hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report® “Best Hospitals” Honor Roll for 2025-2026.  

For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and YouTube. 

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Subject of Research

People

 

New technology could use sunlight to break down ‘forever chemicals’

University of Bath

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An international team of scientists led by the University of Bath has developed a new catalyst – a substance that speeds up chemical reactions – that uses sunlight to break down so-called ‘forever chemicals’ prevalent in the environment and known to accumulate in the human body with unknown long-term health effects.

They hope this technology could in the future be scaled up and used to detect or remove these persistent chemicals from the environment.

Published today in the journal RSC Advances, the authors report a prototype, easy-to-make carbon-based catalyst which could be used to break down polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a group of water-repellent and incredibly stable chemicals used in products ranging from non-stick saucepans to make-up.

Since PFAS are very chemically stable, they don’t degrade naturally and they’ve been shown to accumulate in the body, water systems, food chain and the wider environment. It’s not fully known what long-term effects they have on human health and the environment, but some studies have linked them to an increased risk of cancer.

Scientists from the University of Bath worked with colleagues from the University of São Paulo (Brazil), University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and Swansea University (Wales) to develop a photocatalyst based on carbon nitrite combined with a rigid microporous polymer.

The polymer helps bind PFAS to the catalyst, which uses light to break it down into carbon dioxide and fluoride, a chemical found in some toothpastes.

First author of the paper, Dr Fernanda C. O. L. Martins, worked on the project during a 6-month placement at the University of Bath as part of her PhD studies at the University of São Paulo.

She said: “PFAS are used in many different products, from waterproof clothing to lipstick, but they accumulate in the body and in the environment over time, with toxic effects.

“Our project has combined an easy-to-make carbon-based catalyst with a polymer called PIM-1 to make PFAS breakdown more efficient, especially at neutral pH, which would be naturally found in the environment.”

As well as using it to break down PFAS, the technology could also be used in a sensor for forever chemicals, by detecting the fluoride that is given off. Whilst it is currently at the prototype stage, and the research team is now looking for industrial partners to scale up and optimise the technology.

Professor Frank Marken, from the University of Bath’s Department of Chemistry and Institute of Sustainability and Climate Change (ISCC), led the project. He said: “Currently it’s very difficult to detect PFAS, requiring expensive equipment in a specialist lab.

“We hope that our technology could in the future be used in a simple portable sensor that can be used outside the lab, for example to detect where there are higher levels of PFAS in the environment.”

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Journal

RSC Advances

DOI

10.1039/D5RA07284K 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Intrinsically microporous polymer (PIM-1) enhanced degradation of heptadecafluoro-1-nonanol at graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4)

 

New review identifies pathways for managing PFAS waste in semiconductor manufacturing

University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering

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image: 

Representative chemical structures of the diverse PFAS used in semiconductor manufacturing are shown, indicating the diversity of structural elements, including carboxylic and sulfonic acids, ethers, side-chains, cylic and bicyclic groups.

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Credit: The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

As semiconductor manufacturing rapidly expands to meet growing global demand for generative AI and advanced electronics, a new review published in Environmental Science & Technology assesses the current state of science, technology and policy around managing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) waste in the industry and outlines recommendations for a path forward.

PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” play a central role in modern chipmaking due to their unique properties and essential function in complex chemical processes like photolithography and etching, yet their links to environmental and health concerns pose an ongoing challenge for the industry.

“Managing the waste from these facilities is a massive undertaking,” said Xiao Su, a professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who advised on the review. “A single large factory can produce thousands of cubic meters of wastewater per day, containing a ‘soup’ of diverse PFAS mixed with various solvents, metals and salts.”

A National Science Foundation-funded workshop held in August 2024 convened experts from academia, industry and government to discuss solutions to the problem. The review paper resulted from that meeting.

“This review is really a consensus statement on where we see the field right now, and where it needs to go for the semiconductor PFAS problem to be solved in a way that allows the industry to grow sustainably,” said lead co-author Devashish Gokhale, a postdoctoral researcher in Su’s research group at Illinois.

Gabriel A. Cerrón-Calle, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University, and Mitchell L. Kim-Fu, Department of Chemistry at Oregon State University, are the other lead co-authors.

The paper, which synthesized insights from the workshop and over 160 published studies, highlights three priority areas for addressing PFAS waste in semiconductor manufacturing: improved monitoring, effective separation and safe destruction.

The authors explored how advanced tools such as AI paired with advanced, high‑resolution mass spectrometry could help identify where PFAS originate, and how they transform during processing. They also examined technologies for breaking chemical bonds, including plasma discharge and electrochemical oxidation, as well as much needed separation methods for concentration, including novel absorbents, membranes and electrochemical approaches.  

Many of these technologies were originally developed for municipal water systems, however, and significant adaptation would be needed to handle the complexity of industrial waste.

“Traditional water treatment methods often fail to catch these chemicals, especially the ‘short’ and ‘ultrashort-chain’ versions that are common in semiconductor waste,” Su said. “Furthermore, because many chemical formulas are proprietary trade secrets, researchers often struggle to even identify exactly which PFAS are present in the waste streams.”

“There's also this challenge of how everything is so integrated and how many steps it has,” Gokhale said. “A typical semiconductor fabrication facility could easily have hundreds or even a thousand manufacturing steps, and these are all integrated with each other. If you develop new treatment solutions, they need to be able to fit inside this complex operation without affecting everything else that's highly optimized.”

Beyond technical challenges, the paper identifies several other areas that need to be considered for progress to happen. These include gaining a better understanding of PFAS’ transmutable chemical properties, determining the likely direction of future regulations, gaining access to real industrial waste streams for lab work, and scaling up lab technologies for industrial settings.

Because interest in finding solutions to the PFAS problem in semiconductor manufacturing continues to increase, Gokhale sees this as an exciting time for researchers in the area.

“There are a lot of high-value applications in the semiconductor industry, which is growing very rapidly,” he said. “This is really a unique opportunity for folks to translate their academic research into industrial practice in an area where there could be significant industrial investment and government interest.”

The paper makes clear that deeper collaboration between industry, academia and policymakers is critical for finding solutions to the issues outlined in the review.

“The ultimate goal is to integrate these tools into compact, cost-effective systems that can be implemented in either existing or future space-constrained factories,” Su said. “By fostering partnerships between academia, government and industry, the sector aims to reach a ‘zero-discharge’ future that supports both technological advancement and environmental safety.”

In addition to Su, professors Jennifer A. Field, Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology at Oregon State University, and Paul Westerhoff, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University, co-supervised the paper, which also includes the contributions of numerous workshop participants from both industry and academia.

The review was supported by the National Science Foundation’s Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET) under grant #2432110.

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Editor’s Note:

To reach Xiao Su, email x2su@illinois.edu; Jennifer Field, email jennifer.field@oregonstate.edu; Paul Westerhoff, email: p.westerhoff@asu.edu

The paper, “Challenges and Opportunities in PFAS Waste Management for Semiconductor Manufacturing,” is available online at doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5c10109.

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Journal

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.5c10109 

Article Title

Challenges and Opportunities in PFAS Waste Management for Semiconductor Manufacturing

Article Publication Date

11-Feb-2026

Elevated lead levels could flow from some US drinking water kiosks

American Chemical Society

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image: 

Drinking water sold from some freestanding water vending machines can contain less per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances but more lead than local tap water.

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Credit: Samantha Zuhlke

After high-profile water crises like the one in Flint, Michigan, some Americans distrust the safety of tap water, choosing to purchase drinking water from freestanding water vending machines or kiosks. Yet this more expensive water may contain different pollutants than local tap water, according to a study in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology. Researchers report that water sampled from 20 kiosks in six states sometimes contained lead at levels above public health recommendations.

"Currently, water kiosks are not regulated the same as tap water; their water is not tested for lead or other metals,” says Samantha Zuhlke, a corresponding author of this study. “Updating water kiosk regulations can improve their quality and help consumers make informed decisions about the water they are drinking.”

Water kiosks are privately owned vending machines that are often marketed as being safer than tap water, commanding prices of $0.25-$0.35 per gallon (compared to less than 2 cents per gallon for tap water in most U.S. cities). Kiosk operators generally treat local tap water with purification techniques such as filtration, ultraviolet light or reverse osmosis (RO) to remove potentially harmful contaminants such as lead, microbes, residual disinfectants, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). But water vending machines in the U.S. are poorly regulated. So, a team of researchers led by Zuhlke and David Cwiertny conducted a comprehensive comparison of the chemical and microbial characteristics of kiosk water and tap water from municipalities close to the monitored kiosks.

The team collected water samples from 20 kiosks operated by four different manufacturers across Iowa and in the surrounding states of Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Most of the kiosks advertised treatment of their water by RO, a process that uses pressure to force water through a semipermeable membrane, purifying the water and leaving most contaminants caught behind the membrane. For comparison, the researchers collected tap water samples from community sources within a mile of each kiosk.

They analyzed all samples and found no evidence of microbial contamination in any sample. They also found that RO treatment in kiosks effectively removed most PFAS from the sourced tap water. However, this benefit was offset by concerning levels of lead in some RO-purified kiosk water samples — nearly twice the concentration recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The researchers traced the lead to the corrosion of brass plumbing in the kiosks following RO treatment. Although the plumbing components are marketed as “lead-free,” small amounts of the metal can leach under the low-pH and low-alkalinity conditions of RO-treated water, they say. Replacing the internal metal pieces with other materials could eliminate lead in dispensed water.

"This work adds to growing evidence that allowable levels of lead in ‘lead-free’ plumbing can still be problematic sources of lead in drinking water when such plumbing is exposed to certain types of water, like that generated after RO treatment,” Cwiertny says.

The authors acknowledge funding from the University of Iowa’s Center for Social Science Innovation and the Office of Undergraduate Research. This work was conducted through the University of Iowa Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination, which receives support through the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

The paper’s abstract will be available on Feb. 11 at 8 a.m. Eastern time here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5c10647   

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The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1876 and chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS is committed to improving all lives through the transforming power of chemistry. Its mission is to advance scientific knowledge, empower a global community and champion scientific integrity, and its vision is a world built on science. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, e-books and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

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Journal

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.5c10647 

Article Title

“Water Quality of U.S. Drinking Water Kiosks: Lead Release from “Lead-free” Plumbing after Reverse Osmosis Treatment”

Article Publication Date

11-Feb-2026