Spotlight Gesundheit – Faculty Lecture No. 8 with Prof. Dr. Annette Peters
Prof. Dr. Annette Peters, Director of the Institute of Epidemiology at Helmholtz Munich and full Professor of Epidemiology at Ludwig‑Maximilians‑Universität München, will deliver the eighth Faculty Lecture on the topic "Human Exposome in health and disease: A perspective from the German National Cohort (NAKO)".
| Date: | 31 March 2026 |
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| Time: | 17.00 h to 18.15 h |
| Location: | Lecture Hall 5, University of Lucerne, Frohburgstrasse 3, 6002 Luzern |
We are delighted to welcome Prof. Dr. Annette Peters to the University of Lucerne. Understanding the role of environmental factors is a lifelong research interest and today she and her team investigate how genetic, molecular, environmental, and behavioral risk factors jointly shape health and disease in large‑scale cohort studies. Annette Peters pioneered work identifying the link between ambient particulate matter and cardiovascular disease.
Prof. Dr. Annette Peters heads the population‑based KORA cohort, initiated in Augsburg, Germany, which has followed 18,000 individuals with regular follow‑up since the mid‑1980s. She also has a leading role within the German National Cohort (NAKO), which has been prospectively investigating 205,000 men and women since 2014.
The title of her lecture is:
Human Exposome in health and disease: A perspective from the German National Cohort (NAKO)
The German National Cohort (NAKO) is a prospective population‑based study of participants aged 20–69 years, designed to investigate determinants of chronic disease through long‑term follow‑up. Deep phenotyping data and high‑quality biosamples were collected in more than 200,000 participants during the baseline examination in 18 study centers located in 16 study regions (Peters et al., European Journal of Epidemiology, 2022). NAKO includes 87.7% participants from urban areas and 12.3% from rural areas. A central pillar is the integration of high‑resolution environmental exposure data to explore how cumulative environmental determinants influence health outcomes.
The lecture will give recent examples of ongoing research in this area. Furthermore, NAKO has available a unique collection of biosamples enabling research on the genetic and molecular signatures of disease. The presentation will describe the resources and the current ongoing efforts to enrich the database. Finally, the presentation will highlight the potential of cohort studies in combining human genome and exposome research and discuss approaches to foster prevention on the basis of cohort study data.
After the lecture, participants are invited to join us for drinks and snacks.
The lecture will be held in English, is open to the public, and free of charge. Please register by 24 March 2026.
