ATHLETE (Advancing Tools for Human Early Lifecourse Exposome Research and Translation)

Born in Bradford is part of the ATHLETE (Advancing Tools for Human Early Lifecourse Exposome Research and Translation) consortium. The project involves 22 partners from 11 European countries and the United States and aims to study the effects of the exposome – the totality of an individual’s environmental exposures from conception – on child and adolescent health.

As one of 15 birth cohorts contributing to ATHLETE, BiB will contribute to the goal of developing a “toolbox” of advanced exposome tools which will be used to quantify and assess the wide range of individual-level and community-level environmental exposures and risk factors on mental, cardiometabolic, and respiratory health outcomes and  their associated biological pathways. This consortium also aims to develop and implement acceptable and feasible exposome interventions and translate the resulting findings to prevention strategies and policy recommendations.

ATHLETE’s specific objectives are to:

1. Set up a prospective Euroean-wide exposome cohort covering the first two decades of life
2. Make the ATHLETE exposome cohort data available during and after the project by developing a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data infrastructure with a safe and robust data management platform
3. Develop and apply novel exposure science tools in order to perform complete and accurate assessment of the chemical, physical, behavioural, and social exposome
4. Develop a set of advanced bioinformatics and statistical tools and strategies in order to evaluate the longitudinal exposome and its health associations, the combined effects of exposures, and the integration of cross-omics data.
5. Identify biological pathways, adverse outcome pathways (AOPs), and molecular events that respond and interact with early life exposures and lead to adverse health
6. Characterize the effects of the exposome on cardiac development and cardiometabolic health, lung development and respiratory health, and brain development and mental health
7. Develop novel, scalable, and acceptable interventions to reduce personal urban and chemical exposome exposures using co-production methods which focus on close partnerships with communities and stakeholders
8. Estimate the societal impact of the exposome through calculating economic costs and morbidity impacts
9. Strengthen the knowledge base for European policy in the environmental health and non-communicable disease prevention arena