The exposome: from concept to utility

The broad sense of ‘non-genetic’. The exposome, therefore, complements the genome by providing a comprehensive description of lifelong exposure history. Remaining focused on the element of application (to epidemiology) is a key to ensuring that the exposome is translated from concept to utility for better delineating the causes and prevention of human disease. At the time of the original proposal, it was recognized that whereas exquisite tools had been developed to sequence the human genome and to interrogate individual susceptibility through genome-wide association studies (GWAS), there was a relative paucity of comparable tools, or indeed investment, in relation to exposure assessment. Given that cancer and…