SUMMER SCHOOL ON EXPOSOME: AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUNG RESEARCHERS

Author: Céline-Hivda Yegen (WP4 contributor)

Today, we definitely know that the environment in all its aspects can play a major role in the development of many chronic diseases. Air pollution, exposure to chemical products, noise stress as well as nutritional and psychosocial stress form the “exposome”, to which each individual is continuously exposed throughout his or her life and which helps determine the health status of the general population. As a result, research has focused in the last 20 years on understanding the impact of the exposome on our health. This has brought for example the creation of the EHEN, the world’s largest project network studying the impact of exposome on health. Our project REMEDIA is one of the 9 projects that are part of the EHEN.

To maintain a scientific watch on the exposome, it is necessary to exchange with researchers from all over the world. This year, we had the opportunity to present our work at the international summer school conference entitled “Environment and planetary health” (Summer School | IMRB – Mondor Biomedical Research Institute (inserm.fr). This event is organized every two years by the Mondor Institute for Biomedical Research (http://www.imrb.inserm.fr/en/), a multi-thematic research center located east of the Paris region, and the Metatox team from the University of Paris Cité. The summer school was organized by Dr. Roberta Foresti (IMRB) and Pr. Xavier Coumoul (Université Paris Cité) and has been held from June 6 to 8, 2022 at the Domaine de Fremigny (France).

Twenty international institutions participated to this meeting. International experts on exposome, as well as representatives of French and European environmental agencies, have been invited to discuss this emerging concept, in order to better understand and characterize the social-environmental health determinants.

This International Summer School was dedicated to environmental stress and its influence on health and disease. The three days began with a visit to the environment laboratory of the LISA (Interuniversity Laboratory of Atmospheric Systems) (http://www.lisa.u-pec.fr/fr) organized by Dr. Mathieu Cazaunau.

 For this 2022 edition, the themes were:

  • “Zoonosis & infections” with Dr. Pascal Boireau (ANSES, French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety), Dr. Pierre Cappy (IMRB), Pr. Françoise Botterel (IMRB), Pr. Robert Barouki (Paris Cité University, France), Pr. Xavier Coumoul (Paris Cité University, France) and Pr. Arnaud Fontanet (Pasteur Institute, Paris, France).
  • “The exposome” which is the heart of our meeting with Dr. Serge Morand (Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand – University of Montpellier, France), Dr. Valérie Siroux (University Grenoble Alpes, France), Pr. Frédéric Relaix (IMRB) and Pr. Andreas Daiber (University Medical Center Mainz, Germany).
  • The “Exposomics-epigenetics interactions” with Dr. Oskar Karlsson (Stockolm University, Sweden), Dr. Zdenko Herceg (International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France), Pr. Joëlle RUEGG (Uppsala University, Sweden), Dr. Maria Melchior (Sorbonne University, Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health, Paris, France).
  • “Agencies and their role in prevention and sustainability” with the intervention of several guest speakers with, Dr. Pascal Sanders (Anses, French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety) and Dr. Mirjam Luikten (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, RIVM, The Netherlands).

For our REMEDIA project, two posters were presented, entitled “Evaluation of the combined effect of exposome elements in pulmonary manifestation of cystic fibrosis disease” (by Dr. Céline-Hivda Yegen, Post-Doctorate Fellow at IMRB), “Role of the exposome on the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease” (by Clément Buissot, PhD student at IMRB) and oral presentation entitled “How to simulate at the lab realistic episodes of atmospheric pollution for external exposome impact studies” (by Juan Camilo Macias Rodriguez, PhD student at LISA).

This summer school is an excellent opportunity for young researchers to confront all aspects of the environment and to work directly with senior investigators to promote their scientific training. The numerous presentations allowed us to discuss the different approaches taken by other teams to assess the impact of the different elements of the exposome at the cardiac and systemic levels, among others. In addition, it has also been highlighted the major interest for the study of the additive effects of the different elements of the exposome. All these exchanges have shown the multi-disciplinary approaches to be taken into consideration for an efficient complex study of the exposome.