Studies in migrant populations and other investigations clearly show that the ‘environment’ plays a much bigger role than genetics in producing chronic disease, but characterizing the environmental risk factors is currently far more challenging than identifying the genetic factors.
Characterizing the “exposome”, representing the totality of environmental exposures from conception onwards, represents a novel approach to studying the role of the environment, but the challenge before us is how to achieve this goal. I will compare and contrast bottom-up (i.e. chemical specific) and top-down (agnostic) strategies for characterizing the human exposome. Methods for characterizing the internal exposome will be described that integrate chemical exposures from both exogenous and endogenous processes.
The exposome offers a conceptual leap towards understanding the environmental causes of human disease through comprehensive studies of the internal chemical environment and will complement advances in genomic analysis.
Biography
Martyn T. Smith, Ph.D., is Professor of Toxicology in the School of Public Health, Division of Environmental Health Sciences, at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1980 from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College, London and completed post-doctoral training in toxicology at the Karolinska Institute. He taught at the School of Pharmacy in London before coming to Berkeley where he currently teaches Advanced Toxicology and Introduction to Toxicology.
Since 1987, he has been the Director of the NIEHS Superfund Research Program at Berkeley. He has authored over 300 publications and has served on numerous advisory boards as a consultant or grant reviewer. His research interests include the causes of leukemia and lymphoma and the application of biomarkers in toxicology and epidemiology.
This lecture will be followed by a drinks reception