Understanding how endocrine disruptors and chemical mixtures of concern target the immune system to trigger or perpetuate disease

The ENDOMIX project addresses the urgent need to understand the true impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) on human health in order to inform regulators and advise citizens.

ENDOMIX will tackle this challenge by revealing associations and causality between EDCs and adverse health outcomes by focusing on exposure to multiple EDCs during life course including windows of susceptibility and making use of already existing robust data from multiple European cohorts.

Modelling how real-life EDC mixtures target the immune system to initiate, trigger or perpetuate diseases combined with high throughput bioassays will reveal health-relevant mixtures of concern whose impact will be studied using ground-breaking methodology while delivering valuable information on mechanistic pathways and transgenerational impact of exposure to EDCs.

This strategy will lead to the identification of biomarkers and patterns of exposure that are easy to measure, available for big sample sizes, and indicative of health endpoints.

Finally, we will provide evidence synthesis of in vitro, in silico and in vivo data for strengthening causal inference and use a weight of evidence approach to generate artificial intelligence-assisted knowledge graphs.This unique loop approach with a novel focus on the immune system as EDC target is only made possible by the consortiums interdisciplinary expertise and extensive access to existing data and biosamples as well as a meticulous study design.

The knowledge generated by this consortium will be disseminated to the scientific community provide a thorough new evidence base for policy making and will reach citizens of all ages to raise awareness about the risks of EDC exposure and promote health-preserving behaviour.

Hence, the outcomes of ENDOMIX do not only provide essential new knowledge and understanding but also and have far-reaching implications for the health and well-being of society, including significant savings in European health care systems.