UKEMS 2016 - UK Molecular Epidemiology Group Session - EXPOsOMICS

Between 26 -29^th June 2016, King’s College London held the 39^th Annual Meeting of the United Kingdom Environmental Mutagen Society (UKEMS). The meeting covered ‘all aspects in relation to DNA damage and mutations caused by environmental agents’ according to Dr. Volker Arlt, Local Organiser of the 39^th Annual Meeting of UKEMS.

David Phillips, Professor of Environmental Carcinogenesis at King’s College London mentioned that the meeting had “around 150 registered participants and it featured a number of symposia, including, on the final day, one on EXPOsOMICS”. The EXPOsOMICS project is a European project funded by the European Commission and led by Prof. Paolo Vineis, Chair in Environmental Epidemiology at the School of Public Health, Imperial College London and it looks at the effects of environmental exposures (air pollution and swimming pool water contamination) on health. The UKEMS session on EXPOsOMICS held on the 29^th June was co-chaired by Prof. Vineis and featured 7 presentations from members of the EXPOsOMICS Project which discussed their latest findings.  Prof. David Phillips also mentioned that “the symposium was well attended and all presentations elicited interesting questions and discussions from the audience, from whom the feedback was very appreciative and informed ".

Amongst the EXPOsOMICS members who presented on the day were Prof. Jos Kleinjans (Maastricht University, Netherlands) who gave a Keynote lecture on ‘Transcriptomics responses amongst environmentally exposed study population’ and Prof. Nicole Probst-Hensch (University of Basel, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Switzerland) on ‘Challenges in investigating the asthma exposome’. Presentations were also done by Dr. Cristina Villanueva (Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology, Spain) on ‘Exposure to disinfection by-products in swimming pools and associated early effect biomarkers’, Prof. Augustin Scalbert (International Agency for Research on Cancer, France) presented on ‘Metabolomics and the exposome in epidemiology’ and Dr. John Gulliver (Imperial College London) on ‘Air pollution measurements and modelling to characterise the external exposome’.

Dr. George Preston, Research Associate, King’s College London, presented his findings on ‘Probing the internal exposome using untargeted albumin adductomics’. "Giving an oral presentation in the UK Molecular Epidemiology Group Session was a great opportunity to share recent results with the multidisciplinary community of UKEMS” said Dr. Preston, adding that he was able “to describe the methods we have developed for protein adductomics, and to highlight collaborative work done with colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley”. Dr. Preston concluded that “many insights into the exposome from multiple different angles were gained during the preceding days of the meeting, which covered aspects of genotoxicity and environmental exposures”.