Urban Exposome: 21st Century Solutions for Health Research
May 22-24, 2023
Mexico City
This collaboration marks the seventh exposome symposium organized by the Mount Sinai Institute for Exposomic Research since 2018, and the first in Mexico.
The first Mexico-USA Exposome Symposium was held on May 22-24, 2023 and the theme focused on the “Urban Exposome: 21st Century Solutions for Health Research.” Urban environments have unique concerns due to their higher levels of air pollution, noise, poverty rates, concentration of heat islands, and lack of green space among other reasons. The meeting provided a unique opportunity to develop new collaborations between US and Latin America-based researchers in the fields of environmental health and exposomics. Convening institutions were the Mount Sinai Institute for Exposomic Research, the Institute of Biomedical Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico.
Keynote addresses were delivered by Juan A. Rivera-Dommarco, PhD, Senior Professor and Researcher, and Former Director General, National Institute of Public Health, Mexico (INSP), Trevor K. Archer, PhD, Deputy Director, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and Andrea Baccarelli, MD, PhD, MPH, Leon Hess Professor and Chair, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. More than 160 researchers and trainees attended the 3 day symposium at the Institute of Biomedical Research. Leading scientists shared innovative methods to measure both internal and external environmental exposures, including through novel biomarkers, wearables, remote sensors, and geospatial modeling, as well as new statistical/bioinformatics analyses of large-scale exposomic data and a novel approach called Anthroposomics which includes bio ethnography into the Exposomics approach.
The poster session featured 20 posters and top winners were:
FIRST PLACE: Pablo Knobel, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai — “Long-term exposure to PM2.5 components and cardiometabolic risk in the World Trade Center Health Program cohort.
SECOND PLACE: Rodrigo Ugalde-Resano, MD, National Institute of Public Health (INSP) — “Breast cancer and serum organochlorine pesticides concentrations in women from Northern Mexico: a mixture analysis”
THIRD PLACE: Cecilia S. Alcala PhD, MPH, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai — “Prenatal exposure to phthalate mixture and childhood respiratory health outcomes: A Study from the PROGRESS Cohort” The symposium planning committee included:
- Robert Wright, MD, MPH, Co-Director, Mount Sinai Institute for Exposomic Research
- Martha M. (Mara) Téllez Rojo, PhD, Senior Researcher, National Institute of Public Health, Mexico (INSP)
- Citlalli Osorio, MSc, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Genomic Medicine and Environmental Toxicology, Institute of Biomedical Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
- Andrea Baccarelli, MD, PhD, MPH, Leon Hess Professor and Chair, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has many collaborative research project in Mexico, notably the “Programming Research in Obesity, Growth, Environment and Social Stressors (PROGRESS)” study which is a collaboration between Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Columbia University and the National Institute of Public Health (INSP). PROGRESS uses state of the art methods in social science, epidemiology, and toxicology to assess transdisciplinary risk factors impacting human health. PROGRESS may be the first birth cohort specifically designed to prospectively address the joint impact of chronic stress and toxic metals on child development.
The symposium received support from the Mount Sinai Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (HHEAR) Lab Hubs and Data Center (U2CES026561, U2CES026555) (U2CES030859); HEALS, the Mount Sinai Environmental Health Sciences Core Center (P30ES023515); Mount Sinai ConduITS Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program (UL1TR001433). Additional support was provided by LinusBio.
