The lab was started in the late 1960s with help from the Campbell Soup Company to the MIT Department of Nutrition and Food Science for the purchase of an Hitachi RMU-6E double-focusing mass spectrometer. It was supervised at that time by the late Phil Issenberg, and the research involved traditional areas such as odors, flavors and oxidation products. In the early 1970's the emphasis shifted toward food-related genotoxic substances such as aflatoxins and nitrosamines, and GC-MS was used extensively both to identify potentially toxic food components, and their precursors and metabolites, and to quantitate them. The nitrosamine projects evolved into studies on endogenous nitrosation and endogenous nitrate formation; these in turn led to a focus on nitric oxide biochemistry, and this has led ultimately to current approaches to mechanisms and biomarkers of inflammation, e.g., in ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. Most recent is our collaboration in the human-on-a-chip project, sponsored by DARPA and NIH.
By 1974, Phil Issenberg had moved to the Eppley Institute in Omaha, and Pete Wishnok joined the Department, working first with Mike Archer (now at the Ontario Cancer Institute) and then with Steve Tannenbaum. Support shifted to NIH (e.g., NIEHS and NCI) and the laboratory became the basis of the Analytical Cores for Program Project Grants under Steve Tannenbaum (Endogenous Nitrite Carcinogenesis in Man) and Jerry Wogan (Molecular Biomarkers of Exposure and Effects of Environmental Carcinogens). Sara Stillwell - who joined the group in 1985 after having worked at the Institute for Lipid Research at Baylor University College of Medicine with the Horning group - has retired. Paul Skipper has had an especially significant role in the development of the accelerator mass spectrometer; Rosa Liberman was a major contributor to this project.