Contents
TOXI-Members In The Wild
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At a baseball outing during last year’s ACS meeting in Denver
Message from the Chair
Greetings, TOXI members. Hope the first half of the summer was not too hot for you.
The next big event for TOXI is the ACS National Meeting (ACS Fall 2025 – American Chemical Society). We will have three and a half days of programming. Thanks to Sarah Shuck for organizing the meeting. See Sarah‘s synopsis about the meeting in this newsletter. Our premier event is the Founders’ Award Symposium, which is on Monday. The Founders’ Award Recipient is Shana Sturla (ETH Zurich), a past TOXI Program Chair, a past TOXI Chair, and currently Editor of Chemical Research in Toxicology. We will also host a symposium organized by Benedikt Warth (University of Vienna), who will receive the Chemical Research in Toxicology Young Investigator Award. Our Keynote Speaker is Laura Kiessling (MIT), the founding editor of ACS Chemical Biology. Laura has a terrific social media presence on BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/laurakiessling.bsky.social).
On Wednesday, at noon, TOXI will hold the annual business meeting. We will share our financial status, our plans for the future, including the nomination slate for the fall elections. A great way to enhance your national presence is to be active in a National Organization. TOXI has a pipeline for young academic faculty and industrial scientists to become involved in our Division. This process starts with helping to run the symposia at the national meeting. Contact Grover Miller (MillerGroverP@uams.edu), our next Program Chair, to volunteer.
Baseball Game. We have a free evening on Wednesday. We are planning to have an outing to the Mets-Nats Baseball game. We will subsidize the tickets for students and post-docs who are TOXI members. Send me an email at tes13@psu.edu if you are interested, and I will keep you updated.
TOXI – 30 Years Old. Next year will be our 30th year as an ACS Division. We will celebrate our history in the Newsletters and at the National Meeting. Our Newsletter Editor, Gunnar Boysen, will ask for photos and memories to be highlighted in the upcoming Newsletters.
Tom Spratt
University of Pennsylvania
Chair, Division of Chemical Toxicology.
ACS Fall 2025 TOXI Program Highlights
Monday morning DILI:
The Division of Chemical Toxicology will be kicking off an exciting week starting Monday, August 18th at 8:00 AM with the Drug-Induced Liver Injury (DILI) session, led by Drs. Nicolas Meanwell (Rutgers University and Bristol Myers Squibb) and Fred Guengerich (Vanderbilt University). This dynamic session brings together leading voices from both industry and academia to explore a high-impact topic that touches every corner of toxicology.
High Noon
At noon, we are co-sponsoring a special workshop with the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials, a leader in industry innovation. Join us for great science and a chance to expand your professional network.
TOXI Awards
At 2:00 PM on Monday, don’t miss the TOXI Awards Session as we celebrate excellence in the field. Dr. Benedikt Warth (University of Vienna) will receive the Chemical Research in Toxicology Young Investigator Award, and Dr. Shana Sturla (ETH Zurich) will be honored with the TOXI Founders’ Award.
SCI-MIX
Visit TOXI presenters at the SCI-MIX
Tuesday -> early morning Investigators
Tuesday morning opens with the TOXI Student and Postdoctoral Symposium, hosted by Drs. Luke Erber (University of Kansas) and Rachana Tomar (Vanderbilt University). This provides a fantastic opportunity to support the next generation of toxicologists.
Afternoon – Damaged DNA
Tuesday afternoon will feature the session on Endogenous DNA Damage and its Role in Human Disease, hosted by Drs. Natalia Tretyakova (University of Minnesota) and Kun Yang (UT Austin). This session will spotlight how DNA damage influences health and disease across biological systems.
Keynote
At 5:00 PM, we’re honored to welcome Dr. Laura Kiessling (MIT) as the 2025 TOXI Keynote Speaker. Her lab’s groundbreaking research uses chemical biology to uncover how carbohydrates influence biological mechanisms.
TOXI Meet & Greet Conversations
Tuesday evening brings the highly anticipated TOXI Poster Session. Come for the science, stay for the conversations; it is a great chance to catch up on emerging work and meet new colleagues.
Wednesday morning, Reactive Actions
Wednesday morning kicks off with Reactive Metabolite Post-Translational Modifications and Their Analysis, hosted by Drs. Nate Snyder (Temple University), Benjamin Garcia (Washington University), and Clementina Mesaros (University of Pennsylvania). Expect engaging talks and fresh perspectives on this evolving field.
High noon TOXI businesses
At noon, join us for the TOXI Business Meeting that is open to all! We will provide lunch, present awards, and share updates about our division’s ongoing work and plans. That afternoon, Dr. Aaron Fleming (University of Utah) will lead the session on Current Topics in Chemical Toxicology, a fast-paced lineup of new ideas and research highlights that reflect the breadth of our field.
Thursday Repair
We will wrap up the week on Thursday morning with the session Single Base Damage Repair and Health Relevance, hosted by Dr. Zucai Suo (Florida State University). This final session will spotlight leaders in DNA repair and its critical implications for health. We are excited for a vibrant program and the opportunity to engage with the TOXI community!
Sarah Shuck, City of Hope
Founder’s Award
I was delighted to learn that Professor Shana Sturla of the ETH Zurich is this year’s recipient of the Founders’ Award. Professor Sturla certainly embodies the award’s criterion of “outstanding scientific achievement in chemical toxicology.” She received her BS degree from Berkeley and Ph.D. from MIT, then joined my laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow in 2001 when she relocated to Minnesota for personal reasons. She never really applied for a position in our lab; rather just announced her presence one day. I said, “Don’t you want to look around and see what other opportunities might be available?” Her response was: “No, I’ve already decided…your lab is where I want to be.” That was a lucky day for me, but it was also a good example of Shana’s dedication and focus, qualities that have served her well in her distinguished career. She was a wonderful member of the group, contributing important work but also a steady stream of useful ideas to multiple projects that were in progress. In 2004, she accepted a position in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Minnesota, then, in 2009, relocated to the ETH Zurich, where her career really blossomed and matured with her innovative research contributions to the chemistry and biology of DNA damage. She has maintained an active and highly productive research group, leading with her strong intellect, timely concepts, superb chemical and biological intuition, research focus, and congenial personality. Her large research group at the ETH has consistently published important and innovative studies on specific aspects of DNA damage and repair and their relationship to mechanisms of mutagenicity and carcinogenicity originating from endogenous processes and environmental exposures. Shana has served our research community as Editor in Chief of Chemical Research in Toxicology since 2017, as the journal has continued to be one of the foremost in our field, and is essentially required reading for keeping abreast of important developing research. In summary, Professor Shana Sturla is richly deserving of this prestigious award, and we offer our heartiest congratulations.
Stephen Hecht
University of Minnesota
Chemical Research in Toxicology Young Investigator Award
The Chemical Research in Toxicology and the ACS Division of Chemical Toxicology are thrilled to recognize Professor Benedikt Warth with the 2025 Chemical Research in Toxicology Young Investigator Award, which honors the contributions of an early-career individual who has had a major impact on research in chemical toxicology or a related field. Dr. Warth is a professor of Food Chemistry and Exposome Research at the University of Vienna in Austria. He serves as coordinator of Exposome Austria, the Austrian hub part of EIRENE, one of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), focusing on research linking environmental exposures with health. The primary focus of his outstanding research activity, bridging chemistry and toxicology, is to develop powerful approaches to investigate human exposures and their links to complex health effects. His impactful work, rooted in a strong analytical chemistry and metabolomic training, is resulting in the development of analytical methods that achieve the highest sensitivity while merging targeted and non-targeted data acquisition approaches. His efforts have resulted in a remarkably powerful combination of quantitative data with discovery-driven, untargeted analysis. These mass spec-powered methods Dr Warth is developing are significantly impacting and improving toxicology research and are opening a new chapter of analytical opportunities and discoveries for the exposomics research field. Dr Warth’s impressive work is recognized for its scientific excellence and rigor, and deep impact on the investigation of the role of chemical exposures in human health and diseases, with important applications in the areas of prevention, precision medicine, and risk assessment.
Silvia Balbo
University of Minnesota
Keynote Speaker
Laura L. Kiessling is a powerhouse in chemical biology, celebrated for both her research excellence and her leadership within the scientific community. She pioneered the field of chemical glycobiology, utilizing synthetic sugars and biomimetic molecules to investigate the mechanisms of cell-surface recognition and signaling. Her work on multivalency—how multiple weak interactions collectively drive biological outcomes—has reshaped our understanding of cell fate, immune recognition, and microbial interactions. Visit her lab website to learn about her current research (kiesslinglab.com). Laura Kiessling is the founding Editor-in-Chief of ACS Chemical Biology. She guided the journal from its inception in 2006 until 2022, establishing it as a high-impact venue for interdisciplinary work at the chemistry-biology interface. She’s authored over 140 peer-reviewed publications, holds more than 28 U.S. patents, and has mentored nearly 100 graduate students and postdocs. Her achievements have been recognized through numerous prestigious awards: she received the Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry in 2017 (the first woman ever), the Willard Gibbs Award in 2016, the Alfred Bader Award in 2014, and the Claude S. Hudson Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry in 2013. She also earned the Murray Goodman Memorial Prize in 2013, and in 2019 received the Centenary Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry for outstanding communication and global outreach. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007. We are honored that Laura Kiessling has accepted our offer to present the Keynote Address to the Division of Chemical Toxicology at the ACS Fall National Meeting. Join us on Tuesday, Aug 19, at 5 pm at The Westin DC Downtown (Meeting Room 3) to hear Laura’s Address.
Tom Spratt
University of Pennsylvania
Chair, Division of Chemical Toxicology
Chairs Coner
“The times they are a-changin’.” Bob Dylan’s words still ring true — and today, those changes threaten to undermine one of the greatest engines of American innovation: the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Now is the time to speak up.
In a show of bipartisan unity, the US Senate Appropriations Committee has taken a strong stand for science by rejecting the President’s proposal to slash the NIH budget by 40% and to combine its 27 institutes into 8. In a 26–3 vote, the committee endorsed preserving the NIH’s current structure and boosting its funding by roughly $400, or roughly 1% of its current budget.
There is still a long way to go.
The full Senate must still pass the bill. The House must introduce and pass its own version of the appropriation bill. The Senate and House bills will likely differ, and a Reconciliation Committee must craft a compromised bill that both chambers can pass. The President can then sign or veto the bill.
While the action by the Senate Appropriations Committee was good news for US science, health, and economic strength, there is a long way to go. For decades, Senators and Representatives recognized that federal support for the NIH and NSF is not discretionary but strategic. These investments yield cures, create industries, generate jobs, and maintain American leadership in global innovation.
Not all lawmakers still recognize the value of scientific investment.
I recently wrote to Senator Dave McCormick (R-PA), expressing concern that slashing NIH and NSF funding would weaken America’s scientific leadership — especially at a time when countries like China are massively investing in research and development. His response: he supports the President’s broader plan to reduce federal spending. Sadly, he does not view NIH and NSF as essential investments in America’s future.
That’s why we — as scientists — must be proactive.
We often mentor our students to prepare “elevator pitches” — short, accessible explanations of their research for deans, family members, or even strangers. We need to do the same with what I call “taxpayer pitches”: clear, compelling reasons why everyday Americans should care about NIH funding.
At a recent BBQ, the conversation turned to politics, and several friends expressed support for cutting federal spending — including funding for the NIH. Knowing they were Star Trek fans, I tried to connect the dots: I explained that thanks to sustained NIH support, what once seemed like science fiction is now real. We have CRISPR, which can edit individual genes and enable precision medicine, and mRNA vaccines, developed in mere months — a process that used to take years.
I attempted to rally them. Emphasizing that we have Star-Trek science, made possible by decades of public investment in biomedical research. These aren’t just medical breakthroughs. They are American breakthroughs — made possible by public investment, and now powering health, biotech, and the economy.
The times, they are -a-changin. We can’t remain in our Ivory Towers and rely on lawmakers like Senator McCormick to champion NIH funding. The burden falls to us — the chemists, biologists, epidemiologists, and clinicians — to build grassroots support by making the case to voters, neighbors, and family. NIH funding isn’t an abstract budget line. It’s an investment in our health, our economy, and our future.
We need to build public support. That starts with crafting messages that connect science to everyday life, that show how federally funded research leads to life-saving treatments, job creation, and global leadership.Let’s be ready — not just in labs and grant reviews, but in conversations with voters, neighbors, and family. The future of America depends on it.
Tom Spratt,
University of Pennsylvania,
Chair, Division of Chemical Toxicology
TOXI Story Time
The Curious Scientist and the Curse of the Methanol Monster
Once upon a time, in a quiet lab bathed in moonlight, there lived a young, curious scientist. He had embarked on a great adventure—the daunting challenge of a PhD—to uncover secrets hidden deep inside human lungs. His task was to find tiny, magical creatures called Benzo[a]pyrene DNA adducts. These little buggers were left behind by smoke and pollution, and they held the key to many mysteries.
Our young scientist was ready. He carefully isolated the DNA from tiny pieces of lung tissue, following the ancient spells from his wise mentors: isolate, digest, and send the sample through the magical machine.
But then, strange things began to happen.
No matter how much he searched, the adducts couldn’t be found. It was as if they were disappearing right before his very eyes! The instruments hummed and buzzed like enchanted creatures, the tissues glowed faintly in the dark—but the adducts were gone. And that’s when the whispers began—about the curse of the Methanol Monster.
This wasn’t an ordinary beast. It was a sneaky, invisible creature that lurked in the shadows of the labs. It loved to sneak inside the samples, slurping up the precious DNA adducts and gobbling them down before the scientist could find a trace.
The Methanol Monster was tricky. Sometimes, the young scientist swore he saw its gleaming eyes reflected in the machine’s. Other times, he heard tiny, sinister giggles mingling with the beeps and whirrs of the lab.
His friends warned him, “Use more tissue! Bigger pieces! Get a new super magic machine!” But no matter what he did, the Methanol Monster kept eating the adducts before they could be seen.
Frustrated but determined, the scientist and his advisor decided to try studying animal tissues instead. There, the Methanol Monster seemed to lose interest, and the adducts appeared beautifully, like tiny sparkling treasures.
Finished with his PhD, the scientist was brave enough to try once more—800 human samples! Surely, the Methanol Monster could not keep his feast going forever. But no—the monster’s invisible claws swiped at every attempt. No adducts appeared—just the eerie silence of the lab, and ghostly whispers and giggles of the Methanol Monster.
Years passed. The scientist grew older, got married, and told the legend of the Methanol Monster to his kids. Then, one day, a colleague published a paper revealing that the adducts were hiding in the bronchial branches of the lung—the very place the scientist had never dared to look closely. At long last, the Methanol Monster was banished by knowledge and patience. The monster, it turned out, was just a trick of his young imagination.
And many years later, as his hair turned silver, new magic machines had finally seen what the scientist had sought for so long—the faint Benzo[a]pyrene DNA adduct creature deep in the human lung. The Methanol Monster was gone—defeated by time, persistence, and the courage to keep looking in the dark, but the Curse of Methanol Monster survives as a bedtime story told at night from generation to generation until the end of time.
The moral of the story: Sometimes, the scariest monsters are the ones we imagine in moments of doubt. But with courage, patience, and persistence, even the darkest mysteries can be solved. With that, the scientist closed his eyes, smiled, and drifted off to sleep, ready to face new adventures—without any monsters lurking in the shadows.
Anonymous, 2025