Authors: Charles Easley, PhD, University of Georgia, and the NEXUS Media Team
Frontiers in Environmental Science and Health ( FrESH) is an innovative, advanced program that seeks to train and mentor promising graduate students, medical students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty in environmental health science research; emphasizing how the environment impacts human health.
FrESH offers dynamic training consisting of daily lectures from leading experts, active learning sessions, and extended discussion on emerging topics, followed by hands-on laboratory sessions during a week-long summer course at Morehouse School of Medicine. FrESH recently completed its 4th year and will host its 5th course in 2026.
Last year, FrESH leadership awarded Dr. Gary Miller with the Pioneer Award for his outstanding and pioneering work in exposomics. Guided by Dr. Miller’s participation in FrESH since its inception and through one of the major goals of FrESH to emphasize the important role environmental exposures contribute to human health, Drs. Winston Thompson and Charles Easley (co-Directors of FrESH) decided to feature Exposomics in the 4th year of the FrESH training program, which was held June 1st-7th at Morehouse School of Medicine.
For the 4th year course, a number of exposome-themed lectures and lab sessions incorporated, including single-cell multiomics in exposures in human health, high-resolution metabolomics, high-resolution mass spectrometry to identify chemical contaminants in environmental and human samples, exposomics in neurodegeneration, and exposomics in cancer and cancer health disparities.
The highlight was having the Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Rick Woychik, PhD give the keynote address. The lectures and lab sessions were given by leaders in the field including Drs. Gary Miller, Dean Jones, Melissa Davis, Xin Hu, and Randolph Singh.
NEXUS was well represented at the FrESH 4th year course, the co-Director of FrESH - Winston Thompson, Ph.D., Morehouse School of Medicine - is also a member of the NEXUS Collaborative Hub. Additionally, Dr. Miller gave the lecture “Exposomics in practice: new approaches to studying neurodegeneration”, alongside NEXUS collaborator Dr. Randolph Singh who led the “Leveraging high resolution mass spectrometry based exposomics for identifying chemical contaminants in environmental samples and human studies.” NEXUS Collaborator Dr. Dean Jones whose lecture covered “Use of high-resolution metabolomics for the identification of metabolic signals associated with ubiquitous pollutants”. Dr. Randolph Singh also led a lab on a dedicated Exposome Day of the FrESH course.
Other notable speakers were in attendance including Dr. Melissa Davis who leads SAMBAI, a 2024 Cancer Grand Challenge award. SAMBAI brings together a multidisciplinary team of researchers and institutions across the United States, United Kingdom, and Africa in an effort to “decode the factors that cause and influence disparate cancer outcomes in underserved populations of African descent.” Drs. Miller and Singh lead the SAMBAI “Work Package 2” to conduct exposomics analysis using high-resolution mass spectrometry.
As FrESH continues, the team plans to further integrate the exposome into the FrESH curriculum because the exposome truly captures what they have historically viewed as “Nurture”, and understanding both the “Nature” and “Nurture” components will help drive important discoveries towards curing some of the most devastating human health crises of our time.
NEXUS is excited to continue building a partnership with FrESH and to expand exposomics into the curriculum.
Learn more: https://www.msm.edu/Research/FrESH/index.php
