Rocket Science: Q&A With Heather Patisaul, PhD

Newly elected to the Endocrine Society’s Board of Directors on the heels of being named the scientific director of the Division of Translational Toxicology at NIEHS, Heather Patisaul, PhD, talks about how her belief that human advancement and a healthy ecosystem can exist at the same time led to her pioneering work in endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Watching rockets blast off into space will almost certainly leave anyone in awe. But seeing something like that streak off into the sky can make one think about a lot of things as well: Where are we going? Where have we been? What potential damage to the environment have we inadvertently caused in our ambition?

For Heather Patisaul, PhD, the scientific director of the Division of Translational Toxicology at the National Institutes of Health’s Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), questions like those point to an interest in how endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) ubiquitous in the ecosystem alter neuroendocrine pathways in the brain related to sex-specific physiology and behavior. She currently serves as a member of the Endocrine Society’s bisphenol A (BPA) Task Force and as chair of its Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)/Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Task Force.

In March, Patisaul was named to the Society’s Board of Directors and will serve a three-year term following ENDO 2025. Endocrine News caught up with her to talk about how rocket launches led to her love of science (but not in the most obvious way), what her research shows about how EDCs affect the brain, and what we can do about these “forever chemicals” from here on out.

Endocrine News: First off, congratulations on being named to the Endocrine Society Board of Directors! How does it feel?

Heather Patisaul: Thank you! It feels both humbling and exciting to be a new member of the BoD. I’m very honored and pleased to serve the Endocrine Society in this capacity and tremendously grateful for the opportunity. I look forward to working with the rest of the Board members and Endocrine Society leadership to advance the needs and priorities of its membership.

EN: On that note, can you talk about what the Endocrine Society has meant for your career?

HP: The Endocrine Society has been absolutely instrumental for my career development, dating all the way back to when I was a trainee. I particularly benefited from the close-knit nature of the community to identify mentors and build collaborations and networks. The people I’ve met through the Endocrine Society have helped mentor my trainees, provided input on grants, given key feedback on projects, and supported my tenure and career progression with sage advice and letters of support. The Endocrine Society provides terrific support for people at all career stages, which is something I greatly value and appreciate about the Society. Uniquely, I gained critical training in science communication, translation, and advocacy that has benefited me enormously, including in the classroom. When I mentor trainees and young faculty, I urge them to choose their “home” society and stick with it because of how invaluable the Endocrine Society has been to my own career.

EN: Tell us a little about your background. What led to your interest in science, and then onto endocrinology and your work in endocrine-disrupting chemicals?

HP: I grew up near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where my father worked for NASA. The complex sits right up against the Atlantic Ocean in the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge. While the rocket launches were exciting, I was vastly more interested in the wildlife and the balance between human exploration and the preservation of nature. I firmly believe human advancement and a healthy ecosystem can and must coexist. At the time, some of the earliest work on EDCs in wildlife was being done in alligators and other reptiles by Dr. Lou Guillette at the University of Florida. I took his class as an undergrad and was instantly hooked. While his work focused on the gonads and other reproductive organs, I was interested in the brain and thus the whole HPG (hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal) axis. The rest is history.

“The public is certainly more aware that personal care and other products contain chemicals that are potentially toxic or endocrine disrupting, which is thanks in part to efforts by the Endocrine Society. There is currently very high interest in understanding if these ever-growing and largely unavoidable exposures are contributing to chronic disease and early onset of colon and other cancers.” –  Heather Patisaul, PhD, scientific director, Division of Translational Toxicology. National Institutes of Health’s Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Bethesda, Md.

EN: Your work has shown that BPA can alter behavior, and recent studies have shown that other “forever chemicals” have the potential to lead to psychological changes as well. What is your view on the current state of that research – how endocrine disrupting chemicals can perturb not just hormones that affect the body, but the mind as well?

HP: I love this question because EDCs have taught us that we need a new way of thinking about how these chemicals cause harm. Toxicology arose to detect poisons. Hence a linear dose response. Poisons are simple — the more you take, the more acutely toxic it is until you get cancer or die. With EDCs, the effects are more insidious and result in chronic disease or mental health disorders, and the traditional tools of toxicology are not equipped to detect them. They simply weren’t designed for that. The Endocrine Society has been at the forefront of developing more suitable and sensitive approaches and methods for assessing impacts on brain and behavior. That work is revealing that EDCs can have profound and sex-specific effects on neuroendocrine systems that underlie complex behaviors and thus may be contributing to neurodevelopmental and psychological disorders.

EN: Research has also shown that EDCs affect males and females differently. Is that what you’ve seen as well? What would be the implications of those findings?

HP: Yes, EDC research, including ours, consistently emphasizes the importance of including sex as a biological variable. As we all know, nearly all endocrine systems are sexually dimorphic, hence effects on these systems will also be sex specific. Outcomes cannot be generalized across sex.

EN: You’ve also advocated for safer personal care products when it comes to EDC exposure. Have you seen a shift in awareness, especially in research, in recent years?

HP: The public is certainly more aware that personal care and other products contain chemicals that are potentially toxic or endocrine disrupting, which is thanks in part to efforts by the Endocrine Society. There is currently very high interest in understanding if these ever-growing and largely unavoidable exposures are contributing to chronic disease and early onset of colon and other cancers. Endocrine Society scientists are well poised to perform that research and advocate for decision makers to use that information to make evidence-based decisions on chemical use.

EN: On the other side of things, in your opinion, what are some ways people can mitigate their exposure to EDCs?

HP: Some of the simplest things people can do is to avoid use of food contact plastics to the degree possible, buy fragrance-free products, take advantage of “clean” personal care and other products, vacuum with a HEPA filter at least once a week, and stop using cookware with perfluorinated compounds. Efforts that take a greater investment include avoiding furniture and other products with flame retardants, installing a reverse osmosis water system, buying organic food to the degree possible, and limiting use of pesticides in the home.

EN: Can you share anything about what you’re currently working on?

HP: My lab is using a unique, socially monogamous, bi-parental rodent model, the prairie vole, to assess how early life chemical exposures may contribute to disruption of attachment, affiliation, and other socioemotional behaviors relevant to neurodevelopmental disorders that cannot be assessed in rats or mice. So, we’re sort of the ambassadors for this model in the toxicology world. My division within NIEHS is working on many fronts to advance the use of nonanimal testing, systematic review methods, high-throughput screening, and the development of computational and other tools to assess environmental impacts on endocrine health.

Bagley is the senior editor of Endocrine News. He wrote about the relationship between type 2 diabetes and liver disease, and how endocrinologists can take the lead in treatment.