Human mycotoxin exposure : from biomonitoring towards exposomics

The assessment of human mycotoxin exposure can be conducted through two approaches: an indirect method, which relies on combining food chemical analysis with food consumption data, and a direct method that involves analyzing mycotoxin biomarkers of exposure in biological fluids like urine, blood, feces, or breast milk. In recent years, many efforts have been put in the development of fast and robust (micro)sampling techniques as well as ultra-sensitive targeted and untargeted multi-mycotoxin LC-MS/MS methods for the analysis of mycotoxin biomarkers of exposure. Nevertheless, still many gaps in our understanding of the human mycotoxin metabolism exist. Therefore, human toxicokinetics studies are invaluable to further optimize the human biomonitoring approach. Examples of ongoing human mycotoxin biomonitoring studies will be discussed during the presentation. Moreover, mycotoxins are only one group of dietary and environmental contaminants humans are exposed to. The exposome concept attempts to measure all non-genetic exposures from conception throughout the life course. As an example, FLEXiGUT -the Flemish exposome project- is the first large-scale exposomics study focused on chronic low-grade gut inflammation. The project aims to characterize human life course environmental exposure to assess and validate its impact on gut inflammation and related diseases. The main research question of FLEXIGUT is “What is the importance of the exposome in the development and progression of low-grade gut inflammation and related diseases?”. However, sub-questions such as “What is the role of chronic low-dose multiple mycotoxin exposure on the gut microbiome-inflammation axis?” are being investigated as well. To answer these questions, we combine exposure science and highthroughput -omics technologies with epidemiological studies. The integration and analysis of various - omics datasets, such as the metabolome, metagenome, and DNA adductome, using a multi-omics approach, present the potential for identifying relationships between these features. This approach enables the creation of classifiers and predictive models, facilitates the discovery of biomarkers associated with exposure and disease risk, and sheds light on the early molecular events within pathways leading to the development of diseases.

Jaar van publicatie:2024

Toegankelijkheid:Closed