Almudena Espin-Perez
Postdoctoral Scholar
Gentles Lab
BMIR, Stanford University

Abstract:
Efforts in cancer prevention have drawn increasing attention in the past few years. However, despite significant efforts the impact of biomarkers for early detection of cancer has remained limited, as has understanding of changes in health that may signal progression towards a disease state.  Cancer disease can result from the combination of environmental exposures to chemical and physical stressors and human genetics. It has been shown that both long-term and short-term exposure to low levels of these environmental mixtures can already have an adverse effect on human health. Using ‘omic’ techniques, exposure data can be linked to biochemical and molecular changes in our body, improving our understanding on how these pollutants influence the risk of developing cancer. In this talk, I will present examples of human cohorts from several EU projects (the EXPOsOMICS project, the EnviroGenomarkers project and the Flemish Environment and Health Study) that aim to develop approaches to study the role of the environment in human disease, focusing on transcriptomics and microRNA expression