Nadeau's research spans the intersections of environmental exposures, immunology, allergy, and clinical intervention. Her work integrates exposomics—the comprehensive study of lifetime environmental exposures—with immunologic and epigenetic analysis, focusing on public health, pediatric allergy, and climate-related health challenges. She has combined basic laboratory science with clinical studies and policy engagement, aiming to translate mechanistic insights into improved prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies for environmentally-mediated diseases.
Environmental Exposures, Extreme weather and Immunity Her research examines wildfire smoke,
air pollution,
microplastics, and other climate-driven exposures, with a focus on high-risk populations such as children, pregnant individuals, first responders, and underserved communities. Over more than three decades, she has studied how environmental and epigenetic factors contribute to immune dysfunction, incorporating exposomics to evaluate the cumulative effects of multiple exposures over time in adults, children, and pregnant women
Food Allergy Mechanisms and Clinical Trials A major component of Nadeau's research has focused on the prevention and treatment of food allergies. While at Stanford, she directed the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research, where she led clinical trials in
oral immunotherapy aimed at inducing
immune tolerance, particularly in children at risk for single and multiple food allergies. Among these efforts was the phase 2 POISED study, which evaluated sustained unresponsiveness in patients who had completed peanut oral immunotherapy and were monitored for immune biomarkers and long-term outcomes.
Cellular and Epigenetic Mechanisms of Immune Tolerance Nadeau's translational studies have examined how
immune cell populations change in response to therapeutic interventions. Her team has characterized the differentiation of
CD8⁺ T cells associated with tolerance induction following oral immunotherapy, work published in
Nature Communications. She has also documented epigenetic methylation changes in genes such as
IL4,
IL10, and
IFNγ, linked to
air pollution exposure during pregnancy. In parallel, she has investigated how particulate
air pollutants can alter
monocyte polarization and promote "
trained immunity" in the context of
asthma, identifying potential pathways through which environmental exposures exacerbate disease severity.
Systems and Population-Level Immune Responses Beyond cellular mechanisms, Nadeau has contributed to large-scale studies examining how environmental exposures affect health at the population level. Her research has included mapping associations between pollutant exposure and
cardiovascular risk markers, such as
blood pressure in adolescents, and analyzing the cellular environment of the lung in
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease using single-cell RNA sequencing. She has also participated in international collaborations on the development of
World Health Organization air quality guidelines, incorporating immunological evidence into public health recommendations. Additional publications have addressed the growing burden of allergic disease in the context of extreme weather, including the implications of longer pollen seasons, increased particulate air pollution, heat waves, and biodiversity loss on respiratory and allergic conditions worldwide. == Training others ==