Environmental pollution contributes to around one in six deaths worldwide, but connecting specific exposures to specific illnesses has long been a challenge. Traditional methods classify chemicals by their structure, which often fails to predict what they actually do inside the body.

Moving from observation to understanding, first author Salvo Danilo Lombardo (former Menche Lab PhD student, now postdoc at Harvard Medical School) conducted this research under the supervision of our Institute Director Jörg Menche, with PhD student Christiane V.R. Hütter contributing the advanced visualizations and VR-related components. The project was a close collaboration with Miriam Unterlass (Director of Fraunhofer ISC, Professor at the University of Würzburg, and Adjunct PI at CeMM). Together, they looked at biological function rather than mere chemical structure.

• The Cellular “Social Network”: The team compiled 9,887 environmental exposures—ranging from pollutants and food components to medications—and mapped how they interact with the human interactome, the “social network” within our cells.
• Target Neighborhoods: The study reveals that a chemical’s harmfulness is directly linked to how central and highly connected its target neighborhood is within this cellular network.
• From Molecules to Populations: By comparing network predictions with large-scale European health data, the researchers demonstrate that real-world disease rates peak exactly where chemical exposures disrupt internal biological pathways.

This network perspective allows us to systematically track environmental health risks all the way from individual molecules to entire populations, offering a vital blueprint to support future public health protection strategies.

Original Publication: Lombardo, S. D., Hütter, C. V. R., Unterlass, M. M. & Menche, J. A network-based map of the chemical exposome connects molecular interactions to public health. Nat Commun 17, 5754 (2026).

Links and Resources:
Nature Communications Paper
CeMM Press Release
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Fraunhofer ISC
University of Würzburg