In 2025, SLING was awarded a new round of funding for a Phase II project under the same grant scheme, worth S$7.67M (main PI Federico Torta). The project is entitled “BioMEX – Biomonitoring of Metabolic Health and Exposome at the NUS-Agilent Hub”. In this project, we shifted our focus from clinical diagnostics to a newly emerging application area – exposome and human health.

With chemical contaminants having greater presence than ever in the discussion of human health, particularly as endocrine disruptors, there is considerable interest in monitoring the exposure levels as well as metabolome and lipidome in individuals at a high risk of metabolic diseases. To address this emerging demand, we partnered with Agilent Technologies, Singapore Food Agency to establish a Singapore human biomonitoring cohort.

Our goal is to follow the individuals longitudinally with detailed analysis of five major classes of contaminants and heavy metals (PI Amaury Cazenave-Gassiot). The same project also includes other industry partners such as Pathology Asia Holdings and Mobilion as well as national level clinical research groups such as CADENCE and PRECISE.