Exposome-Explorer 2.0: an update incorporating candidate dietary biomarkers and dietary associations with cancer risk

The second version of the Exposome-Explorer database, the first database dedicated to biomarkers of exposure to environmental risk factors for diseases, was launched on 13 September and is now accessible. Exposome-Explorer was developed by scientists at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) with the goal of providing comprehensive data on all known biomarkers of exposure to dietary factors, pollutants, and contaminants measured in population studies.

Exposome-Explorer 2.0 contains data on 908 biomarkers extracted from 812 peer-reviewed publications. Two types of information have been added in the update: 185 candidate dietary biomarkers with 403 associations with food intake (identified in metabolomics studies) and 1356 associations of dietary biomarkers with cancer risk in epidemiological studies, extracted from 313 publications. These additions significantly enrich the database and should contribute to the development of new studies and applications of these biomarkers in molecular epidemiology.

Classifications for both foods and compounds have been revised, and new classifications have been implemented for biospecimens, analytical methods, and cancers. In addition, the web interface has been redesigned to significantly improve the user experience. All of the data in Exposome-Explorer have been obtained from extensive analysis of primary literature and manual annotation of scientific publications.

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