Advanced technologies in genomic toxicology: Current trend and future directions

Abstract

Toxicogenomics is a subdiscipline of toxicology that assesses the toxicity using a combination of genomics, advanced computational technologies, and other high-throughput techniques. In the last few years, the rapid evolution of technologies such as transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and computational technologies allowed the application of a more flexible strategy for the risk assessment due to exposure to chemical and xenobiotic substances. The integration of bioinformatics approaches with novel genomic technologies permits extraordinary advancements in different fields of biology, toxicology, medicine, and, in particular, in occupational medicine, making accessible a “personalized” approach to this discipline. The scope of this paper is to investigate the recent trend of genomic toxicology in combination with bioinformatics approaches and its novel application in toxicological studies with reference to our experience and findings. In particular, it is shown how the dose biomarkers, the pollutants urine metabolites in our case, allow a precise exposure assessment whilst effect biomarkers can be individuated, significantly associated with the former. Among the effect biomarkers, our experience is mainly focused on oxidative stress biomarkers and miRNA profiles. Finally, it is shown how the early effect biomarkers are dysregulated when specific clinical outcomes are occurring. This early dysregulation can be used as individual susceptibility biomarker.