Exposure to contaminants and its associations with oxidative stress

Human biomonitoring (HBM) studies have highlighted what contaminants enter human body and its correlation to a potential alteration in human health status. Oxidative stress (OS) refers to a situation where elevated level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) leads to the disruption of cellular function and cellular damage. Studies have demonstrated that OS serves as an important intermediate event between contaminant exposure and human health impairment, such as thyroid cancer, coronary heart disease, and diabetes. However, susceptible and informative oxidative stress biomarkers (OSBs) in response to contaminant exposure remain largely underexplored in current HBM studies. This project aims to develop methods to comprehensively analyse free and conjugated OSBs in human fluids, which can indicate the oxidative damage on lipids, proteins, nucleic acids, and sugars. By directly applying these methods, together with methods for assessing biomarkers of contaminant exposure, to human fluid samples, this project will explore the associations between oxidative stress and contaminant exposure in real-world scenarios, including bushfire smoking exposure and plastic additives exposure. Additionally, this study would explore the joint effects of exposure to multiple groups of chemicals on oxidative stress in (e-)cigarette smoking scenarios. This study would also explore the oxidative stress effect-directed approach for chemical exposure.     

Please note: This is a student progress review presentation by Yuya Cheng.