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A Framework for Linking High-Throughput Modeling and Measurement Efforts to Advance 21st Century Exposure Science
Citation:
Sobus, J. AND J. Rager. A Framework for Linking High-Throughput Modeling and Measurement Efforts to Advance 21st Century Exposure Science. ISES 2015 Annual Meeting, Henderson, NV, October 18 - 23, 2015.
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL) Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division (HEASD) conducts research in support of EPA mission to protect human health and the environment. HEASD research program supports Goal 1 (Clean Air) and Goal 4 (Healthy People) of EPA strategic plan. More specifically, our division conducts research to characterize the movement of pollutants from the source to contact with humans. Our multidisciplinary research program produces Methods, Measurements, and Models to identify relationships between and characterize processes that link source emissions, environmental concentrations, human exposures, and target-tissue dose. The impact of these tools is improved regulatory programs and policies for EPA.
Description:
The past five years have witnessed a rapid shift in the exposure science and toxicology communities towards high-throughput (HT) analyses of chemicals as potential stressors of human and ecological health. Modeling efforts have largely led the charge in the exposure science field, with targeted measurement studies serving to evaluate, and in some instances calibrate, predictions from computationally-efficient models. There is now a well-recognized need to expand the number of chemicals, and stressors in general, that can be rapidly identified in measurement studies of environmental and biological media. Methods are being borrowed from the well-established field of metabolomics to allow non-targeted screening of thousands of chemicals in a wide variety of sample media. These methods have the means to better evaluate predictions from HT models, prioritize specific analytes for rigorous quantitative analysis, and help nominate chemicals for HT toxicity testing. Concerted efforts towards characterizing the totality of human exposures, defined as the exposome, are needed to unlock the mysteries of human disease, and are now possible through the use of readily available HT analytical platforms. This presentation will introduce non-targeted screening as a viable exposure science tool, and present a framework for integrating HT measurement research with existing efforts to rapidly predict exposures for thousands of environmental chemicals.
