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Tox21 is a collaborative project among four U.S. government agencies interested in advancing environmental health and toxicology by screening thousands of environmental compounds for potential toxicity.

The National Toxicology Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

National Center for Toxicological Research at the Food and Drug Administration

National Center for Chemical Genomics at the NIH Center for Translational Therapeutics (NCTT) at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).

What is the role of the EPA on this project?

Deposition of data

National Center

Deifnitely need to link to the Exposome and/or Human Exposome Project

Key references

a measure of the effects of life-long environmental exposures on health. The term was first coined by Dr. Christopher Wild, a cancer epidemiologist, in a 2005 article entitled, "Complementing the Genome with an “Exposome”: The Outstanding Challenge of Environmental Exposure Measurement in Molecular Epidemiology."

Background
In his 2005 article Wild stated, "At its most complete, the exposome encompasses life-course environmental exposures (including lifestyle factors), from the prenatal period onwards." He also stated that even incomplete versions of the exposome could be of great use to field of epidemiology. Wild published a follow-up paper in 2012 where he suggests steps that can be taken to better define the exposome.

For complex disorders specific genetic causes appear to only account for 10-30% of the disease incidence, although as genomic approaches improve this percentage could increase. Environmental influences contribute to human disease, but unlike with genetics, there is no standard or systematic way to measure the influence of environmental exposures. Some studies, such as those by C. J. Patel et al into the interaction of genetic and environmental factors in the incidence of diabetes have demonstrated that environmental-wide association studies (EWAS) may be feasible. However, but it is not clear what data sets are most appropriate to represent the value of "E".

Research initiatives
In 2012, the European Commission awarded two large-grants to pursue exposome-related research. The HELIX project at the Barcelona-based Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology will attempt to develop an early life exposome, noting that the first exposures occur during development. The second project, Exposomics, is a consortium based at Imperial College London. This project will use smartphones that utilize GPS and environmental sensors to assess exposures.

In the US, the National Academy of Sciences hosted a meeting in December of 2011 entitled "Emerging Technologies for Measuring Individual Exposomes." A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overview "Exposome and Exposomics" outlines the three priority areas for researching the occupational exposome as identified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has made investments in technologies that support exposome-related research, including biosensors, and supports research on gene-environment interactions. However, the NIH has yet to fund any large centers focusing on the exposome like those in Europe.

Proposed Human Exposome Project (HEP)
The idea of a Human Exposome Project, analogous to the Human Genome Project, has been proposed and discussed in numerous scientific meetings, but no such project exists at this time. Several investigators have argued that such an initiative should occur, but given the lack of clarity on how science would go about pursuing such a project, support has been lacking. Reports on the issue include:


 * A 2011 review on the exposome and exposure science by Paul Lioy and Stephen Rappaport, "Exposure science and the exposome: an opportunity for coherence in the environmental health sciences" was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.


 * "Exposure Science in the 21st Century: A Vision and A Strategy", an official report from the United States National Research Council published in September 2012 outlines the challenges in implementing systematic evaluation of the exposome.