Environmental Toxicology & Human Health
The environment in which we live and work has a large impact on our health and influences our risk of disease.
Exposure to chemicals, radiation, noise and other environmental factors are important to consider.
Establishing the linkage between exposures and disease outcomes forms an important part of epidemiological research and informing science-based policy decisions.
The establishment of omics technologies as tools for large-scale profiling of human biofluid samples has recently been acheived by researchers in Biomolecular Medicine in collaboration with others at Imperial College and worldwide.
There is currently a need to develop new biomarkers in environmental exposure assessment. Post-genomic technologies such as metabonomics provide an excellent opportunity to derive novel markers.
- Provide individual-level measurements to complement small-area and group measurements
- Efficient discovery of biomarkers through metabolism-wide association studies
- Mechanistic relevance to exposure and disease
- Use of sentinel species for environmental monitoring
- Potential for direct impact on environmental health policy
Researchers in Biomolecular Medicine are involved in a number of projects focused on understanding the area of environmental toxicology, ranging from studies of populations exposed to industrial pollutants to the effects of common environmental contaminants on sentinel species such as earthworms.
The presence of toxic species in the environment means research in this area can be well integrated with a number of the other research areas (e.g. epidemiology, cancer, drug metabolism, toxicology).
Key Recent Publications
Bundy JG, Davey MP, Viant MR. 2009. Environmental metabolomics: a critical review and future perspectives. Metabolomics 5(1):3-21.
Hughes SL, Bundy JG, Want EJ, Kille P, Sturzenbaum SR. 2009. The metabolomic responses of Caenorhabditis elegans to cadmium are largely independent of metallothionein status, but dominated by changes in cystathionine and phytochelatins. J Proteome Res 8(7):3512-9.
Morrison N, Bearden D, Bundy JG, Collette T, Currie F, Davey MP, Haigh NS, Hancock D, Jones OAH, Rochfort S and others. 2007. Standard reporting requirements for biological samples in metabolomics experiments: environmental context. Metabolomics 3(3):203-10.
Guo Q, Sidhu JK, Ebbels TMD, Rana F, Spurgeon DJ, Svendsen C, Sturzenbaum SR, Kille P, Morgan AJ, Bundy JG. 2009. Validation of metabolomics for toxic mechanism of action screening with the earthworm Lumbricus rubellus. Metabolomics 5(1):72-83.
Bundy JG, Keun HC, Sidhu JK, Spurgeon DJ, Svendsen C, Kille P, Morgan AJ. 2007. Metabolic profile biomarkers of metal contamination in a sentinel terrestrial species are applicable across multiple sites. Environmental Science & Technology 41(12):4458-64.
Bundy JG, Keun HC, Sidhu JK, Spurgeon DJ, Svendsen C, Kille P, Morgan AJ. 2007. Metabolic profile biomarkers of metal contamination in a sentinel terrestrial species are applicable across multiple sites. Environ. Sci. Technol. 12 (41) 4458-4464.
Bundy JG, Spurgeon DJ, Svendsen C, Hankard PK, Osborn D, Lindon JC, Nicholson JK. 2002. Earthworm species of the genus Eisenia can be phenotypically differentiated by metabolic profiling. FEBS Lett 521(1-3):115-20.
