EnviroGenomarkers

Deriving new biomarkers of exposure and early response to environmental pollutants promises improve understanding the biochemical mechanisms that link such exposures to disease endpoints.  The EU FP7 EnviroGenomarkers Project (“Genomics Biomarkers of Environmental Health”) aims to generate and validate such markers by the application of multiple ‘omics’ technologies (metabonomics, protemics, transcriptomics, epigenetics) in a population study.

Started in March 2009, the EnviroGenomarkers project is the first large-scale molecular epidemiological study of this kind will employ a novel strategy in three main parts. Firstly, the discovery and validation of new predictive biomarkers of chronic disease risk where the environment is expected to play a role (e.g. breast cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma).  Secondly, an investigation of the association of these biomarkers with high-priority environmental pollutant exposures (e.g. PCBs, PAHs, lead).  Finally, the discovery of novel exposure markers for these pollutants.

The project will employ a nested case-control study design with blood samples taken from prospectively collected biobank cohorts (EPIC Italy, the Northern Sweden Health and Disease Study and the Rhea mother-child cohort in Crete).  Parallel analysis using transcriptomics, metabonomics, proteomics and epigenetics will provide an integrated dataset that will be mined for biomarkers related to health outcomes.

Associations between these biomarkers and an array of exposure measures derived from trace analysis in the samples and from other sources such as questionaire data and geographical information systems modelling will be derived. Together, these analyses will allow risk-predictive intermediate biomarkers to be defined and used to better understand exposure-disease relationships. Around 1500 samples will be analysed during the course of the project.

EnviroGenomarkers is funded by the EU (Grant 226756).

For more information, please visit the EnviroGenomarkers website.