Exposome-Explorer is the first database dedicated to biomarkers of exposure to environmental risk factors for diseases.
It contains detailed information on the nature of biomarkers, populations and subjects in which biomarkers have been measured, samples analysed, methods used for biomarker analyses, concentrations in biospecimens, correlations with external exposure measurements, and biological reproducibility over time.
This information can be used by researchers to compare the performance and field of application of various biomarkers and to identify the specific biomarkers or panels of biomarkers that are most useful for biomonitoring or disease etiology studies.
Data collection was initiated with biomarkers of dietary and pollutant exposures measured in the general population.So far, Exposome-Explorer contains data on 692 dietary and pollutant biomarkers extracted from 480 peer-reviewed publications. A total of 10 510 concentration values measured in blood, urine, and other biospecimens have been collected. The database also contains 8034 correlation values between dietary biomarker levels and food intake and 536 values of biological reproducibility over time; these are valuable indicators of the quality of a biomarker.
Exposome-Explorer was developed at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in collaboration with the University of Alberta, Canada, with the financial support of IARC, the European Commission (EXPOsOMICS, FP7-KBBE-2012, grant no. 308610; NutriTech FP7-KBBE-2011-5, grant no. 289511), and the Joint Programming Initiative FOODBALL (2014-17).
Please cite the database as follows:
Neveu V, Moussy A, Rouaix H, Wedekind R, Pon A, Knox C, Wishart DS, Scalbert A. Exposome-Explorer: a manually-curated database on biomarkers of exposure to dietary and environmental factors. Nucleic Acids Res. 2017; 45(D1):D979–D984. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkw980 PMID:27924041