The Exposome Strikes Back! You are what you eat... and breathe... and touch...

Every breath you take carries more than oxygen. From cigarette smoke to traffic fumes, our lungs are constantly exposed to a complex mix of chemicals and particles, part of what scientists call the exposome. But why do some people develop chronic lung disease while others remain healthy? This talk explores how smoking and air pollution reshape the lungs, how damage builds over time, and why certain individuals are more vulnerable. Join us for a journey into the hidden biology of the air we breathe.

Sunlight is something we experience every day, but its effect on the body extend beyond tanning and sunburn. In this talk, I'll explore how exposure to sunlight affects not just the skin, but also the immune system - the body's natural defence against disease, including cancer. Using cutting-edge research, we're uncovering how these effects extend beyond the skin. Join me to discover how something as everyday as sunlight can have surprising effects on our health.

The innate immune response of the lung is the first line of defence against inhaled pathogens. If dysregulated this can cause inflammatory diseases such as asthma and lead to infection by opportunistic and obligate pathogens. Recent research has begun to uncover the role immunometabolism plays in repelling lung invaders, with malnutrition and poor diet being increasingly linked to susceptibility to disease. Could a poor diet be ineffectively fuelling our immune system? Could a high sugar diet be over-energising our immune system promoting inflammatory diseases such as asthma?

Immunotherapy can be life-changing but for some patients, it doesn’t work. Why? The answer might lie in your gut. I’ll show how a single micronutrient, vitamin D, can “rewire” friendly gut microbes (the microbiome) to supercharge cancer-fighting immune cells and boost responses to immunotherapy in mice. This flips how we think about the microbiome: not just which microbes you have, but what they do. Could diet and microbes help tip the balance in the fight against cancer? We are now uncovering new ways the microbiome shapes immunity, opening new possibilities for prevention and treatment.