Yunjia Lai, Muhammet Ay, Carolina Duarte Hospital, Gary W Miller, Souvarish Sarkar
{"title":"Seminar: Functional Exposomics and Mechanisms of Toxicity-Insights from Model Systems and NAMs.","authors":"Yunjia Lai, Muhammet Ay, Carolina Duarte Hospital, Gary W Miller, Souvarish Sarkar","doi":"10.1289/EHP13120","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Significant progress has been made over the past decade in measuring the chemical components of the exposome, providing transformative population-scale frameworks in probing the etiologic link between environmental factors and disease phenotypes. While the analytical technologies continue to evolve with reams of data being generated, there is an opportunity to complement exposome-wide association studies (ExWAS) with functional analyses to advance etiologic search at organismal, cellular, and molecular levels.</p><p><strong>Objectives: </strong>Exposomics is a transdisciplinary field aimed at enabling discovery-based analysis of the nongenetic factors that contribute to disease, including numerous environmental chemical stressors. While advances in exposure assessment are enhancing population-based discovery of exposome-wide effects and chemical exposure agents, functional screening and elucidation of biological effects of exposures represent the next logical step toward precision environmental health and medicine. In this work, we focus on the use, strategies, and prospects of alternative approaches and model systems to enhance the current human exposomics framework in biomarker search and causal understanding, spanning from bench-based nonmammalian organisms and cell culture to computational new approach methods (NAMs).</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>We visit the definition of the functional exposome and exposomics and discuss a need to leverage alternative models as opposed to mammalian animals for delineating exposome-wide health effects. Under the \"three Rs\" principle of reduction, replacement, and refinement, model systems such as roundworms, fruit flies, zebrafish, and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are advantageous over mammals (e.g., rodents or higher vertebrates). These models are cost-effective, and cell-specific genetic manipulations in these models are easier and faster, compared to mammalian models. Meanwhile, <i>in silico</i> NAMs enhance hazard identification and risk assessment in humans by bridging the translational gaps between toxicology data and etiologic inference, as represented by <i>in vitro</i> to <i>in vivo</i> extrapolation (IVIVE) and integrated approaches to testing and assessment (IATA) under the adverse outcome pathway (AOP) framework. Together, these alternatives offer a strong toolbox to support functional exposomics to study toxicity and causal mediators underpinning exposure-disease links. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP13120.</p>","PeriodicalId":11862,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Health Perspectives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":10.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11373422/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Environmental Health Perspectives","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP13120","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/9/4 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: Significant progress has been made over the past decade in measuring the chemical components of the exposome, providing transformative population-scale frameworks in probing the etiologic link between environmental factors and disease phenotypes. While the analytical technologies continue to evolve with reams of data being generated, there is an opportunity to complement exposome-wide association studies (ExWAS) with functional analyses to advance etiologic search at organismal, cellular, and molecular levels.
Objectives: Exposomics is a transdisciplinary field aimed at enabling discovery-based analysis of the nongenetic factors that contribute to disease, including numerous environmental chemical stressors. While advances in exposure assessment are enhancing population-based discovery of exposome-wide effects and chemical exposure agents, functional screening and elucidation of biological effects of exposures represent the next logical step toward precision environmental health and medicine. In this work, we focus on the use, strategies, and prospects of alternative approaches and model systems to enhance the current human exposomics framework in biomarker search and causal understanding, spanning from bench-based nonmammalian organisms and cell culture to computational new approach methods (NAMs).
Discussion: We visit the definition of the functional exposome and exposomics and discuss a need to leverage alternative models as opposed to mammalian animals for delineating exposome-wide health effects. Under the "three Rs" principle of reduction, replacement, and refinement, model systems such as roundworms, fruit flies, zebrafish, and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are advantageous over mammals (e.g., rodents or higher vertebrates). These models are cost-effective, and cell-specific genetic manipulations in these models are easier and faster, compared to mammalian models. Meanwhile, in silico NAMs enhance hazard identification and risk assessment in humans by bridging the translational gaps between toxicology data and etiologic inference, as represented by in vitro to in vivo extrapolation (IVIVE) and integrated approaches to testing and assessment (IATA) under the adverse outcome pathway (AOP) framework. Together, these alternatives offer a strong toolbox to support functional exposomics to study toxicity and causal mediators underpinning exposure-disease links. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP13120.
期刊介绍:
Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) is a monthly peer-reviewed journal supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Its mission is to facilitate discussions on the connections between the environment and human health by publishing top-notch research and news. EHP ranks third in Public, Environmental, and Occupational Health, fourth in Toxicology, and fifth in Environmental Sciences.