Stephanie J. London

Stephanie J. London is an American epidemiologist and physician-scientist specializing in environmental health, respiratory diseases, and genetic susceptibility. She is the deputy chief of the epidemiology branch at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Education London earned a B.A. from Harvard College, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, an M.P.H in Occupational Health and Dr.P.H. in Epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her 1989 dissertation was titled Risk Factors for Breast Cancer in the Nurses' Health Study. She completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. London is licensed in California, and is Board Certified in both Internal Medicine and in Preventive Medicine, with Specialty in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Career London was an assistant professor in the department of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC before coming to National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in 1995. She is currently (2021) a principal investigator at NIEHS with a dual appointment in the epidemiology branch and laboratory of respiratory biology.

Research The genetics, environment & respiratory disease group, headed by London, focuses on environmental causes, genetic susceptibility and interactions in relation to nonmalignant respiratory conditions. Her group is leading a meta-analysis of Epigenome Wide Association Studies of pulmonary function within the CHARGE consortium.

London collaborates with Norwegian investigators to study early life factors in relation to asthma and allergies within the Norwegian Mother and Child (MoBa) pregnancy cohort. London received funding for a seven-year questionnaire in MoBa to identify asthma and allergies at this age when are more reliably ascertained. To extend her asthma findings in MoBa London developed a sub-study of genome wide methylation in newborns using the Illumina 450K platform. Her group published the first study of the effects of any in utero exposure using this platform. This study, now widely replicated, identified numerous novel loci differentially methylated in response to maternal smoking in pregnancy. Motivated by this finding, and as proof of principle for the use of methylation signatures in newborns to identify effects of other in utero exposures and to study potential epigenetic underpinnings of childhood health and disease, London formed an international consortium of birth and childhood cohorts, the Pregnancy and Childhood Epigenetics Consortium (PACE). The first PACE publication combined data on maternal smoking and DNA methylation in offspring from 16 cohorts identifying 6,000 differentially methylated CpGs in newborns, half of them novel and many persisting into childhood.

London also led a larger meta-analysis of personal smoking in adults and methylation in the CHARGE consortium. In a recent publication her group compared methylation signatures from these two meta-analyses and identified genes uniquely differentially methylated in relation to the newborn exposure. Subsequent PACE publications have examined newborn methylation in relation to maternal body mass index during pregnancy, maternal alcohol intake, birthweight, and prenatal air pollution (NO2 and particulate matter). A recent PACE publication led by London's group identified numerous loci differentially methylated at birth and childhood in relation to childhood asthma. London co-led a large meta-analysis identifying the extensive newborn methylation signature of gestational age at birth. There are numerous PACE projects underway and the consortium continues to grow.