Core Project 1: Toxico-biomarker

Core Project 1: discovery of toxico-biomarker panels using a “system approach”.

Humans are exposed to a number of drugs, food additives and environmental toxicants. Multiple bio-chemical interactions can occur, some known, many unknown, and, with the genetic predisposition, can contribute to or induce diseases. The human health risk assessment can therefore and should be established at the genomics, the transcriptomics, the proteomics and the metabolomics level. Recent advances in separation sciences and particularly in mass spectrometry offer spectacular possibilities to screen and quantify, on a large-scale, proteins, peptides and small molecules and to study many of their modifications more efficiently.

The objectives of the first core project are to:

  • Establish, by mass spectrometry-based methods (MS and MS-MS), using a system approach, several panels of biomarkers for detecting a signature of exposure to multiple drugs, doping agents and toxicants.
  • Set-up an interdisciplinary MS-MS suite of software and MS-MS database to facilitate the development of the field.
  • Create a new knowledge base, called Toxico-Biomarker Knowledge Base (TBKB), to incorporate and dedicatedly enrich information on proteins, peptides and small molecules, linked to UniprotKB/Swiss-Prot and the currently used small molecule databases (NIST, Marquet, Weinmann, etc...)
  • Unravel, from one or two discovered biomarker panels, some of the patho-physiological mechanisms involved in the toxicity of small molecules (i.e. Dioxin).
  • Invent and build, with the selection of panels, an MS-MS external quality control program for toxicology laboratories.

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Last Updated on Monday, 09 February 2009 14:51 Created: Tuesday, 03 February 2009 16:16