Of all the omics disciplines, metabolomics is perhaps the most underutilized but potentially the most powerful for understanding disease mechanisms. It provides a complete biochemical profile of a cell or tissue under a specific set of conditions. Metabolomics can help identify disease mechanisms, markers for diagnostic tests, and targets for drug discovery.

Quantifying the metabolome is more tractable than the other omics, since the number of endogenous metabolites is lower than the number of genes, transcripts, or proteins. The chemical diversity and concentration ranges of biochemicals and metabolites involved, however, provide formidable challenges when searching for metabolomic biomarkers.

The Mechanistic Understanding of Disease Biomarkers through Metabolomics webinar explores the basic of metabolomics and how the technology has been applied to the discovery of markers and pathways associated with drug action and disease. It also covers two case studies related to prostate cancer and sepsis.

A new study has been published which seeks to better understand the toxicological uncertainties of fenofibrate. Co-authored by Metabolon and Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, “Untargeted Metabolomic Profiling as an Evaluative Tool of Fenofibrate-Induced Toxicology in Fischer 344 Male Rats” appeared in the June issue of Toxicologic Pathology (Vol. 37, No. 4, 521-535, 2009).

A widely-used drug, fenofibrate belongs to the fibrate class of drugs that have been used to treat patients with a variety of metabolic disorders and is often a preferred therapy in combination with statins (John asks for what disease? Need more specifics on disease). While fenofibrate is considered safe in humans, it is known to have toxicological effect in rodents. This study was an investigation of the efficacy and toxicological effects of this class of drugs in rodents.

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