# Developing Metabolomic Technologies to Advance Environmental Exposure Analysis

> **NIH NIH R35** · WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $662,128

## Abstract

Project Summary
 Environmental exposures play a leading role in the development of human disease and are therefore of
significant interest, but measuring the myriad of environmental exposures encountered over a lifetime is an
immense challenge. Even more complicated is identifying the molecular pathways disrupted by each
environmental exposure encountered. Yet, progress on both of these challenges is ultimately fundamental to
understanding the contribution of the environment to human health. The overarching mission of my research
program is to address this critical need by developing and applying novel metabolomic technologies.
 Metabolomics is a relatively new analytical approach that is ideally suited to help address these formidable
challenges because it comprehensively profiles small molecules of both exogenous and endogenous origin. In
practice, however, metabolomics has not fulfilled its potential in the environmental health sciences. Its
application has been severely limited due to the tens of thousands of signals detected by liquid
chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) that cannot be identified. Without biochemically naming the
metabolomic signals, biological inference is compromised and insights into exposure chemicals or effect
mechanisms are prevented. The major goal of my research program is to overcome this barrier in
metabolomics to (1) enable unprecedented exposure analysis in humans and (2) to discover toxicant effect
mechanisms by using zebrafish.
 First, with new technologies that my laboratory has developed, we will name each signal detected by
LC/MS untargeted metabolomics from human blood and the zebrafish embryo. This will constitute the human
and zebrafish “reference metabolomes”. We will then develop a resource to automate identification and
quantitation of each metabolite in the reference metabolomes. Second, we will screen the zebrafish reference
metabolome to identify effect mechanisms of specific toxicants known to have adverse effects on only a single
zebrafish organ. We will test our hypothesis that each organ’s metabolism is similarly disrupted by some
toxicants, but that their unique phenotypic responses reflect organ-specific sensitivities to particular pathways.
Thus, in addition to building a metabolomics resource that will greatly enhance exposure analysis in human
subjects, we also expect that the application of our platform to zebrafish will identify toxicant effect
mechanisms and establish biochemical pathways that contribute to particular phenotypes.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10885106
- **Project number:** 5R35ES028365-08
- **Recipient organization:** WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Gary J Patti
- **Activity code:** R35 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $662,128
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-09-15 → 2025-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10885106

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10885106, Developing Metabolomic Technologies to Advance Environmental Exposure Analysis (5R35ES028365-08). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10885106. Licensed CC0.

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