The Society of Toxicology (SOT) 2025 Annual Meeting, held in Orlando, FL, from March 16-20, 2025, featured presentations by Jocelyn Dicent, a third-year PhD student, and Yunjia Lai, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Scientist both from the Miller Lab in the Center for Innovative Exposomics at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and is the primary institution for overseeing NEXUS.
The SOT conference brought together world-leading scientists, experts, and health professionals to share groundbreaking discoveries in toxicology, pharmacology, and environmental health.
In light of NEXUS’s mission and inspiration, Jocelyn Dicent and Dr. Lai’s poster presentations highlighted exciting developments in chemical exposomics—the comprehensive study of environmental chemical exposures and their effects on human health. They showcased novel approaches using high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) and advanced informatics to map complex exposure profiles linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and study the mechanistic underpinnings of exposure-disease interplay.
Jocelyn’s poster presentation investigates how metabolites of trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial solvent linked to Parkinson’s disease (PD), contribute to neurotoxicity and disease outcomes. Using advanced HRMS and optimized workflows, she presented her progress in developing a method to identify specific TCE metabolites in mouse tissues post-exposure. Additionally, she studied the developmental and neurotoxic effects of a subset of these TCE metabolites in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, leveraging a battery of cutting-edge tools such as a large particle flow cytometric sorter, microfluidic systems, and super-resolution fluorescence microscopy.
Yunjia’s poster explored manganese (Mn)-induced neurotoxicity and PD-like phenotypes in both an adult Drosophila melanogaster model and human iPSC-derived midbrain dopaminergic neurons. Using high-coverage global metabolomics, she identified biotin (vitamin B7) metabolism as a critical compensatory pathway underlying Mn-induced pathology. Subsequent experiments confirmed that biotin supplementation significantly mitigated Mn-induced neurodegeneration, motor dysfunction, neuronal loss, and mitochondrial impairment.
Both studies illustrate the power of exposomics in uncovering novel metabolic mechanisms and therapeutic targets against environmentally induced neurodegenerative diseases—with unparalleled precision, sensitivity, and coverage.
Jocelyn Dicent and Dr, Lai comment that “The SOT event provided an excellent platform to discuss cutting-edge methodologies and network with researchers passionate about translating exposomics into meaningful public health outcomes.