The Interaction Between Humans, Lifestyles, and the Environment Viewed through Metabolism
Exposomics at the Gordon Research Conference in Ventura, CA; Feb 2-7, 2025.
The Gordon Research Conference in Ventura, California was Co-Chaired by Susan Jenkins Sumner, PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Warwick Dunn, PhD, University of Liverpool, and focused on metabolomics and human health. This conference specifically highlighted metabolomics technologies and how they can be used to study human health and new applications in fields such as epidemiology, cancer, nutrition, analytical chemistry, and bioinformatics. In general, metabolomics is the comprehensive study of the metabolome, and metabolites can be found in cells, tissues, and body fluids and have recently been found to be associated with the development of “unhealthy aging and diseases, positive and negative impacts of interaction with the exposome and the promotion of human health.”1 It is understood that factors including diet, genetics, environmental factors, and the microbiome impact the human metabolic profile.2
NEXUS MPI, Chirag Patel, PhD, Harvard University, commented, “It is great to see the exposome appearing more prominently in conferences like the Gordon. There is clearly excitement about the exposome in the metabolomics community, and we are excited to build partnerships and collaborations.” Overall, this conference featured forward-looking talks by The Dorrestein Lab at the University of California San Diego led by Dr. Pieter C. Dorrestein, PhD, along with The Sumner Group at the University of South Carolina at Chapel Hill, led by Susan Jenkins Sumner, PhD. David Wishart, PhD, University of Alberta, and others spoke about resources for the exposome at scale that will be helpful in crafting requirements for the field. Additionally, Bob Wright, MD, MPH, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, gave a visionary talk on mapping the exposome.
Overall, the conference promoted connection with NEXUS collaborators, like Vidhu Thaker, MD, Columbia University Medical Center, and Dinesh Barupal, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who have put exposomics in their research programs!
Footnotes
“2025 Metabolomics and Human Health Conference GRC.” 2025. Grc.org. 2025. https://www.grc.org/metabolomics-and-human-health-conference/2025/.↩︎
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