Each breath we take, every meal we eat and every environment we find leaves a molecular fingerprint in our bodies, a hidden record of our life exposures. Researchers in the exhibition field explain how avant -garde technologies are unlocking this biological archive, marking the beginning of a new era of disease prevention and personalized medicine. Scientists present a road map to overcome technical and logistics challenges and realize the maximum potential of the field.
Exposomics explores how the complex interaction of environmental factors, from pollutants in our water and food to social and psychological stressors, shapes our biology. When studying these combined exhibitions, researchers can discover how they collectively influence health, from metabolism and cardiac function to brain health and the risk of diseases.
He Perspective The article is directed by the Banbury Exposomics Consortium, an interdisciplinary group of scientists who met at the Cold Spring Harbor Banbury Center in 2023 to define the central principles of this field in rapid evolution. Gary Miller, PhD, main exposure member and member of the Faculty of Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, was the main organizer of the consortium.
Miller, vice -cisante of research and innovation and professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School, is a copilate of the National Exhibition Exhibition Coordination Center, Nexus. It also leads Indipharm, an initiative funded by ARPA-H that uses exposomic to predict medication interactions and improve the effectiveness of medicines.
Exposomic in action
The young field is already demonstrating its transformative potential. The researchers who analyze molecular evidence identified a specific industrial solvent such as the culprit of renal disease groups among factory workers. In another study, scientists merged the mapping of satellite pollution with residential location information to reveal how air particles prematurely age the brain. The scientists who analyze thousands of circulating molecules identified TMAO, a metabolite of intestinal microbiome produced by eating red and dairy meat, as a large taxpayer previously passed to the risk of heart attack.
These discoveries are possible by avant -garde technologies and tools such as portable sensors that track chemical exhibitions in real -time satellite images that map contamination to the blocks of the city and ultra sensitive mass spectrometers that detect compounds present in one part by billion.
A broader lens in our health
While genetics provides our biological plan, it explains only a fraction of the risk of chronic disease. The exposure captures everything that happens to us, from industrial chemicals to social stressors. Unlike traditional studies that examine individual exposures in isolation, exposomics integrates advanced tools to understand how environmental, social and psychological factors collectively interact with our biology.
This synergy approach powerfully with other “omics” sciences. When combined with genomics, proteomic and metabolomic, the exhibition creates the first complete image of health determinants. The authors imagine a future in which all the main studies of diseases incorporate exposure analysis as a standard practice.
Systematically analyzing these complex interactions can improve the development of drugs, discover the hidden drivers of the disease and address health disparities. The approach joins the precision medicine and the health of the population.
The way to follow
Miller and his colleagues describe the critical priorities to advance the exhibition. These include the development of more sensitive technologies, such as portable or minimally invasive tools that measure an individual’s exposure; the creation of a human exposure reference to allow the analysis and contextualization of the population; and the implementation of standardized protocols to enable the analysis promoted by the AI of complex data sets. The field must also address ethical considerations on data privacy and the need for a greater approach to social health determinants, the authors write.
The newly launched American and European exhibition centers now provide the infrastructure for world collaboration, standardization of methods, harmonize data and train researchers in the interdisciplinary skills necessary to advance in this field. These centers form the critical backbone for the future progress of the exhibition.
“Now we are building the first systematic framework to measure how all exhibitions, from chemicals to social, interact with biology in a lifetime. Our goal is to create processable strategies for healthier lives,” says Miller.