Exposome science for public health protection and innovation

Abstract

The exposome (Wild 2005) represents the totality of exposures from conception onwards, simultaneously identifying, characterizing and quantifying the exogenous and endogenous exposures and modifiable risk factors that predispose to and predict diseases throughout a person’s life span. Unraveling it will help us understand the intricate web of relationships between environmental exposures, lifestyle, genetics and disease. It is thus expected to contribute significantly to the determination of causal associations between environmental factors and human health taking into account genetic susceptibility. Making this vision come true poses significant scientific and technological challenges in terms of both untangling the complex biological networks that regulate our body’s response to external stressors and processing and analyzing the large datasets generated from the use of multiple high throughput analytical platforms (-omics technologies). Exposome research will try to reverse the paradigm of “nature versus nurture” and adopt one defined by complex and dynamic interactions between DNA sequence, epigenetic DNA modifications, gene expression and environmental factors that all combine to influence disease phenotypes. The approach outlined in this lecture brings together and organizes environmental, socio-economic, exposure, biomarker and health effect data; in addition, it includes all the procedures and computational sequences necessary for applying advanced bioinformatics coupling advanced data mining, biological and exposure modeling so as to ensure that environmental exposure-health associations are studied comprehensively. The overall methodology is being verified in a series of population studies across Europe, tackling various levels of environmental exposure, age windows and gender differentiation of exposure, and socio-economic and genetic variability.