The environment is increasingly acknowledged to play a critical role in our risk of developing diseases, with 30,000 deaths attributed to air pollution alone in the UK each year. A new research centre based at The Universities of Manchester and Oxford will turn the attention of world-leading immunologists toward understanding how the totality of environmental factors we are exposed to over our lifetimes, known as "the exposome", rewire our immune systems to cause chronic inflammatory diseases.
Up to £50 million is to be invested in a Medical Research Council Centre of Research Excellence (MRC CoRE) in Exposome Immunology over the next 14 years.
These environmental exposures, which also include things like microbes and toxins, predominantly interact with our bodies at what we call 'mucosal barrier sites', for example our lungs and intestines. Here, they met by our immune cells, and can change how the immune system works, pushing some tissues into chronic inflammation, causing diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
The centre will embrace AI technology to interrogate large data sets, such as those from UK Biobank, patient cohorts and long-term studies in hospital clinics, and identify common pathways by which environmental factors disrupt the immune system. Findings will be tested through laboratory studies and by exposing healthy volunteers to pollutants and common viral infections, leading to more accurate diagnoses, better prevention, and more effective treatment options.
Individuals from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds often have a more adverse exposome, facing greater exposure to pollution, mould (in poor quality housing), and occupational hazards (cleaning chemicals, industrial processes). The MRC CoRE is therefore key to The University of Manchester's mission to address health inequalities, and builds on work investigating the impact pollution has on our local communities.
Professor Judi Allen, from The University of Manchester is Director of the MRC CoRE in Exposome Immunology.
She said: "Globally we're facing a crisis in chronic inflammatory diseases, such as asthma and inflammatory bowel disease. For decades we've been studying how our genes make us susceptible to disease. While very valuable, genetics has only got us so far. We need to understand how our environment interacts with our genes to make our immune system malfunction."
"We will benefit from advances in new technologies to identify which of the many complex factors may be important in driving disease, but what's different about our new Centre is we are going to define how the immune system is altered by these environmental factors and how that impacts inflammation. Changing environments, often made worse by socioeconomic disparities and rising pollution, appear to be increasing the rates of these diseases, making it even more imperative to find the causes."
"We hope to later expand our research to include more environmental factors, such as mould and microplastics, which are growing concerns. An ultimate goal of this research would be to discover the underlying causes of these chronic diseases so we can develop better prevention and treatments."
Professor Fiona Powrie, co-director of the MRC CoRE in Exposome Immunology, from University of Oxford, said: "This is an exciting opportunity to bring together complementary expertise in The University of Manchester and University of Oxford to build a multidisciplinary team to tackle this challenge. Our Centre will train a new generation of scientists working across biology and environmental science, future proofing our efforts to combat the health effects of a changing environment."
Professor Patrick Chinnery, MRC Executive Chair, said: "This new MRC Centre of Research Excellence will transform our understanding of how lifelong environmental exposures shape immune health and cause chronic inflammatory diseases. With chronic inflammatory diseases posing such a large and growing disease burden, the new centre is well placed pave the way for more effective and targeted treatments.
"Alongside exceptional scientific leadership linking two world-leading centres, and strong partnerships with patients and digital health innovators, the scientists' commitment to the next generation of researchers will embed UK leadership in this field, with long-term potential to deliver a transformative, global impact for health."
