New Generis: A New European Research Project On Children's Health.

The project will study maternal exposure during pregnancy to carcinogenic and immunotoxic chemicals, the resulting fetal (in utero) exposure and its effects on the fetus and in later childhood. Relevant exposures of the fathers will also be evaluated. The major challenge is not just to ascertain the presence of such chemicals in the blood of mothers and children, but to produce new insights into the biological consequences. Toxic chemicals which will be examined include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (processed food, polluted air, tobacco smoke), heterocyclic amines (processed food), nitrosamines (food, water, tobacco smoke), acrylamide (processed food), mycotoxins (contaminated food), dioxin (contaminated food, polluted air), PCBs (contaminated food, polluted air), and ethanol (alcohol drinking). The main research tool which will be employed by NewGeneris is biomarkers (chemicals or cellular components measured in human fluids or tissues) indicative of exposure to toxic chemicals or of their early biological effects. The project will utilise the most up-to-date technology, including genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics (which provide a global view of the complex cellular processes), to discover new biomarkers for application alongside already known ones. Such biomarkers will be sought in biological samples (blood and urine) stored in biobanks (existing or to be created) in Norway, Denmark, United Kingdom, Spain and Greece, which represent a total of around 300,000 mother-child pairs, thus constituting one of the largest studies of its kind ever conducted. The findings of NewGeneris research, together with associated ethical and risk issues, will be communicated to European citizens and relevant stakeholders. The ultimate aim is to contribute to the protection of child health through the formulation of improved health policies, more effective food regulations specially targeted at children and better food quality. Other related research projects funded by the European Union include the FP5 Concerted Action “ChildrenGenoNetwork”, ECNIS (Network of Excellence on “Environmental Cancer Risk, Nutrition and Individual Susceptibility”) and CASCADE (Network of Excellence on “Chemicals as contaminants in the food chain”). This article was published on Tuesday 28th February 2006. Print this article Your feedback is valuable to us! Was this article interesting and relevant for you? Do you have any comments? You can post a reply to this article here.

Note: http://www.env.health.o...