Adductomics: Elucidating the Environmental Causes of Disease

Dear Colleagues,

It is widely accepted that cumulative exposure to chemical agents from diet, medication and environmental sources leads to a wide range of deleterious health outcomes, including adverse drug events, cancer, cardiovascular, respiratory, neurologic and autoimmune diseases. Therefore, investigating exposure-related adverse health outcomes and their underlying mechanisms is currently a major societal challenge.

Bioactivation is one of the most frequent events at the onset of chemically-induced toxicity. Indeed, chemicals are frequently metabolized to reactive (primarily electrophilic) species capable of reacting with biomacromolecules to afford covalent protein, peptides and DNA adducts. Once formed, these adducts may elicit direct cell toxicity, trigger an immune response, and/or initiate mutagenic/carcinogenic processes. Additionally, external exposure can also interfere with the metabolism of endogenous compounds, leading to dysregulation of biological processes which can be on the onset of multiple diseases via the formation of covalent adducts. In fact, reactive electrophiles of endogenous or exogenous sources constitute an important but understudied class of human exposures. One of main challenge to investigate reactive metabolites is their short-life, preventing direct detection. However, exposure to reactive electrophiles can be characterized by adductomics tools: identification and quantification of covalent adducts from reactions between electrophiles and bionucleophiles (DNA, peptides or proteins). Adductomics is a powerful tool to link exposure with the occurrence of diseases, constituting an opportunity for the identification of risk factors, molecular mechanisms of adverse outcomes and biomarkers for early disease diagnosis. Additionally, adductomics can guide regulatory and preventive actions, thereby leading to the minimization of exposure-related health adverse outcomes.

This Special Issue on “Adductomics” will focus on the state-of-the-art of this emerging field that puts together human exposure and disease. However, the successful understanding of this linkage implies to overcome technological challenges and investigate the multiple applications of adductomics. There are still several open questions in this field, including the contribution of endogenous and exogenous electrophilic metabolites, the identification of adequate translational models to identify mechanisms linking adductomics-disease and the usefulness of covalent adducts as biomarkers of effect. Manuscripts addressing these issues are welcome.

Prof. Alexandra Antunes
Prof. Sofia A. Pereira
Guest Editors

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• Adductome
• Bioactivation
• Biomarkers of exposure
• Biomarkers of disease
• Covalent adducts
• Electrophilic species
• Exposome
• Mass spectrometry
• Human biomonitoring
• Reactive metabolites