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29Oct

Metabolon’s Client Data Table enables study analysis

October 29, 2020 MetabolonSocial Blog, Capabilities, Working with Metabolon 39
Metabolon’s newly updated Client Data Table format helps clients review, analyze and understand their project data while making it easier to import into statistical tools like R and Python.
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28Oct

Establishing industry QA/QC best practices for global metabolomics

October 28, 2020 Metabolon Capabilities, Working with Metabolon 38
When evaluating large quantities of information, it is paramount to make data quality a top priority. Metabolon’s Precision Metabolomics™ Data quality is extremely important to maintaining exceptionally high standards. From start to finish, Metabolon emphasizes quality control measures and checks and balances.
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03Sep

3 Ways Machine Learning Propels Metabolomics at Metabolon

September 3, 2020 MetabolonSocial Blog, Capabilities, The 4Cs, Working with Metabolon 41
At Metabolon, we have spent the last 20 years building the best metabolomic competency in the world. Today, we enable, accelerate, and support drug development through biomarker discovery, understanding mechanism of action, patient stratification and more. One tool we use to power our work is machine learning, which automates routine tasks and teachable processes so our experts can focus their efforts on the challenges that most require their expertise.
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18Aug

Metabolon and DNA Genotek: Collaborating to Advance Functional Understanding of the Microbiome

August 18, 2020 MetabolonSocial Capabilities, Microbiome, Working with Metabolon 40
Metabolomic data can play a pivotal role in understanding critical questions across the life sciences—the launch of DNA Genotek’s OMNImet.GUT validated by Metabolon dramatically expanded the accessibility of metabolomics for gut microbiome studies. This milestone shows how Metabolon can deliver innovative metabolomic insights through other collaborations.
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17Jun

For a Successful Metabolomics Study, Don’t Risk Going it Alone

June 17, 2020 Metabolon Capabilities, The 4Cs, Working with Metabolon 41
A successful metabolomics study requires a comprehensive approach focused on quality and accuracy. That's why choosing the right partner can yield many more insights than trying to go it on your own, all while avoiding expensive mistakes. Consider these four risks that come with trying to do a metabolomics analysis without support.
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31Mar

Achieve Study Success with Metabolon’s New Sample Handling Kit: Designed with Experience

March 31, 2020 Metabolon Working with Metabolon 56

Laboratory research studies require a huge commitment of time, money and resources. To help ensure the investment pays off in the form of key insights, simple precautions such as good sample collection practices should be utilized. All too often, studies are delayed or even derailed entirely due to avoidable errors. For example, while hand-written labels are common practice in laboratories, something as small as an ink smudge or illegible handwriting could be detrimental to a study and its results.

Achieve Study Success with Metabolon’s New Sample Handling Kit: Designed with Experience

As interest in metabolomics grows for biopharma, population health and other industries the need to process hundreds of samples quickly has become increasingly important.

To help you avoid sample handling mistakes, keep your timelines on track and achieve the best results from your study, Metabolon has created the Metabolon Study Success Sample Handling Kit. By leveraging our 20 years of best-in-class metabolomics study experience, the Sample Handling Kit was designed with the needs of the researcher in mind – to maintain consistent and efficient workflow, reduce the risk of traceability errors, ensure sample integrity during shipment and maximize study speed and quality assurance.

Applying industry best practices, the Metabolon Study Success Sample Handling Kit was developed with the understanding that each research program is unique. Not just an off-the-shelf item, every Kit is tailored to support your study design, providing the foundational first step of study success with the right quantity and type of tubes for your specific sample type.

One of the challenges researchers often face in metabolomics studies is separating the noise to draw actionable insights, and not all tubes are created equal. With that in mind, Metabolon’s development team carefully evaluated many vendors and hand-selected the most suitable tubes, offering the greatest durability and lowest levels of artifact contribution, such as leaching of plastic and mold releasing agents. This level of diligence will help to ensure the most reliable results to your study every time.

The Metabolon Study Success Sample Handling Kit also aims to plug a crucial gap in studies – traceability. All tubes provided in the Kit are prelabeled with globally unique barcodes, making manual transcription errors or illegible handwritten labels a thing of the past. The pre-programmed hand-held barcode scanner included in the Kit allows the user to easily generate an accurate tracking record. This feature helps to streamline the sample intake process, delivering quick and accurate results.

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When you open your Metabolon Study Success Sample Handling Kit you will receive the barcoded tubes and racks in specially designed cardboard cradles to protect them during transfer and shipping. The cradles are meant to be re-used when preparing your samples for return shipment to Metabolon in order to reduce the risk of breakage, spills and contamination.

All these factors add up to support financial success. There is a cost accrued from inconsistency or errors in labeling, be it financial, turn-around time or – worst-case scenario – data quality. Cutting down on errors improves financial success, and ultimately, study success.

At Metabolon we are committed to your study success. There isn’t another company that offers this all-encompassing support package. From study design and execution, through interpretation and recommended next steps, we are focused on customer success and quality assurance at each step of the program journey.

Wondering what metabolomics can bring to your studies? Contact us today at hello@metabolon.com to get started.

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10Feb

Metabolon: A Rich Past and A Promising Future

February 10, 2020 Metabolon Capabilities, Working with Metabolon 63

When Annie Evans, Ph.D., first joined Metabolon, she had no idea of the breakthroughs she would be a part of, and how metabolomics would grow into an important ‘omics technology. “We’re impacting areas of the life sciences that I never thought possible,” she noted. After completing her Doctorate in Biological Mass Spectrometry at the University of Virginia, she joined Metabolon in 2004 as a research scientist. Early on, she was praised for her straightforward nature and presentation style, two things that played a crucial role in the development of the Metabolon we know now. Today, she is the Director of Research and Development.

Dr. Evans’ background in chemistry led to a fascinating discovery early in Metabolon’s history that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. The study involved a pharmaceutical company that wanted to pinpoint diagnostic markers of a drug that caused gut toxicity. The researchers ran plasma samples of drugs that were known to cause gut issues and some that did not.

Metabolon: A Rich Past and A Promising Future

Dr. Evans discovered a molecule that biologists deemed impossible to occur in mammals, but the presence of the molecule could not be denied. That is when metabolomics revealed that gut toxicity could be recognized through metabolites from the gut that passed into circulating plasma. What they were seeing for the first time were microbial derived metabolites in the blood, a discovery made 13 years ago. Even today, metabolomics is the only ‘omic able to identify gut microbiome activity in the blood.

Clinical metabolomics has the potential to make precision medicine a reality delivering transformational medicine. Traditional clinical testing of patient samples involves analyzing and measuring individual analytes or biomarkers. In the case of IEM’s, the screening method typically includes three panels, which measure in the range of 50-60 small molecules. Metabolon’s application of clinical metabolomics extends the number of biomarkers that can be measured significantly. Instead of 50-60, we can identify more than 500 small molecules, giving researchers a broader range of biomarkers to mine for insights.

The application of metabolomics is exceptionally significant for IEM and rare disease detection. There are hundreds of IEM diseases, and often the clinical manifestations of those diseases are vague, or the metabolic pathway that is disturbed is not immediately apparent. Applying global, or untargeted, analytical approaches, where prior knowledge of the affected metabolic pathway is not required, provides advantages over targeted analytical approaches and can extend the diagnostic potential of IEM screens beyond the 34-58 disorders that are currently evaluated in newborn screening programs, especially in complex cases. That makes throwing out this wide net to measure as many biomarkers as possible invaluable in a clinical setting.

When evaluating large quantities of information, it is paramount to make data quality a top priority. A critical step in drawing insights from untargeted metabolomics is accurate metabolite identification. Metabolon’s Precision Metabolomics™ workflow delivers Tier 1-2 identifications for detected metabolites and uniquely provides high confidence in the identification of compounds. By contrast, most metabolomic practitioners operate primarily with annotations that only meet the standards of Tiers 3-5, where some unique features are identified. Still, there is low confidence in confirming the metabolite. Data quality is extremely important to Metabolon, with exceptionally high standards applied to our work in clinical metabolomics. From start to finish, we emphasize quality control measures and checks and balances.

Metabolon’s method of clinical metabolomics is validated by Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA), a regulatory standard for all testing of patient samples. Metabolon is ISO 9001: 2015 certified for analytical and diagnostic testing of biological specimens and accredited by the College of American Pathologists for diagnostic testing on human specimens. Additionally, Metabolon has a New York State Department of Health Clinical Laboratory permit to perform Quantose IR and IGT testing for the identification of insulin resistance and impaired glucose tolerance under the categories of Clinical Chemistry and Endocrinology.

In addition to the validation work we do to demonstrate the properties of the method, such as precision and accuracy, we also run the method under very specific quality control guidelines, which are even stricter than our research guidelines, including running batch controls for each of the analytic batches. We start by setting up the assays following policies that dictate how to establish a reference population, how you qualify the normalizing matrix, and so on. The typical regulatory requirements for review of the results is exceeded, with an additional analytical and lab director review in addition to our typical sub-level review. All of these steps ensure data quality and accurate insights.

In the early 2000s when Metabolon was formed, there were very few metabolomics practitioners. In fact, the term “metabolomics” was not yet part of the common scientific language. The practitioners mainly composed of academic universities referred to the science as “metabonomics,” and primarily used Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) technology. Metabolon, on the other hand, focused on a mass spectrometry-based platform that delivered on a global scale. Metabolon ultimately decided to standardize its methodology on the use of LCMS because the company quickly noticed the short-comings of both GCMS and NMR technology in terms of specificity and sensitivity. By choosing LCMS, Metabolon was able to identify more compounds than NMR technology allowed, while also enabling greater processing speed and reducing process variability beyond what is possible with GCMS. While using LCMS in the study of metabolomics was less common at the time, this methodology has allowed Metabolon to maintain its focus on the biology and the meaning of its findings—to interpret and make sense of the data that is revealed.

In its early years, Metabolon employed fewer than 15 scientists who studied just 50 to 100 small molecules. Today, the company has more than 200 employees, has run over 10,000 projects and has identified more than 2,000 named molecules in human plasma from a database of over 5,300 biologically relevant compounds. This comprises the world’s largest metabolomics knowledgebase.

In addition to traditional metabolites, Metabolon’s library features more than 1,000 complex lipids, analyzed on the Lipidyzer™, which the company co-developed with Sciex in 2012.

Metabolon’s compound database is remarkable not only for its size, but for its quality. From the beginning, Metabolon adopted a validated identification methodology, which required the identification of a compound based on multiple orthogonal criteria to an authentic standard analyzed using the same methodology. Compound identification confidence levels were later described and formalized in Sumner et. al., as Tiers ranging from 1 to 5 for each metabolite, with Tiers 1 and 2 being of the highest level of confidence. In untargeted metabolomics, accurate metabolite information is the key step in separating noise from insight. Today, more than 85% of compounds in Metabolon’s library meet the Tier 1 criteria. Though tier rating is a critical part of confidence in compound identification, it is a difficult and expensive process that takes tremendous resources and experience to be successful. As a result, few other metabolomics service providers are able to deliver the same level of confidence in metabolite identification offered from  Metabolon’s Precision Metabolomics™ solution.

Today, Metabolon remains committed to investing in and advancing leading-edge metabolomics technologies. This emphasis is improving the understanding of systems biology, enhancing identification of clinically relevant biomarkers, accelerating drug development, improving patient stratification and revealing new insights in the rapidly advancing field of microbiome research.

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For Dr. Evans, each success is a motivator to make the science even better. Once the power of the science has been revealed, the reward motivates both her and other scientists to continue making it better for everyone who is involved. She remarks that each scientist has been heavily involved in the trajectory of the company, each playing pivotal roles to move the science and technology from the small lab they began in to where they are today. “How could you not just fall in love with any technology where you can take something that you love and really feel like you’re impacting people and improving lives,” Dr. Evans said.

Metabolon: A Rich Past and A Promising Future

More about Dr. Annie Evans:

Dr. Annie Evans leads the discovery metabolomics and lipidomics profiling research and development team at Metabolon, Inc. The metabolomics and lipidomics platforms developed under Dr. Evans have been the analytical basis for thousands of commercial studies from over 700 institutions since 2004.  She has over 30 publications covering the analytical methodology as well as informatics, data processing requirements and approaches for global profiling metabolomics and lipidomics workflows. These publications have been cumulatively cited over 2000 times, with a foundational metabolomics methodology paper being cited over 650 times. These publications have spanned various technology journals such of the Analytical Chemistry and the Journal of Chromatography, biological journals such as Blood and PNAS as well as high impact journals such as Nature Genetics. Dr. Evans currently holds an h-index of 35, with a JCR of 13. She is involved in industry establishment of quality control methods through the National Institutes of Health Metabolomics Quality Assurance & Quality Control Consortium (mQACC).

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21Oct

An interview with the Founder and CEO of Siolta

October 21, 2019 Metabolon Microbiome, Working with Metabolon 35

We sat down for a conversation with Nikole Kimes, Ph.D., Co-Founder and CEO of Siolta. The company’s name, which is pronounced sheel-ta, is a Gaelic word for “seeds” and speaks to the company’s microbial therapeutics that are created to reseed the depleted gut microbiome with naturally occurring bacteria, which are essential for a healthy immune system.

Dr. Kimes’ interest in science resulted from two passions: human health and environmental ecosystems. Her intrinsic understanding that these two concepts are inevitably linked fueled her interest in science and eventually converged at an understanding of how the world around us impacts our biological ecosystem.

Tell us about your background and how Siolta came to be.

As a student I studied holistic health and microbial ecology at different points in my training, and both underscored the complex interactions of dynamic biological systems. Through my interest in health, I learned the ecological concepts of systems biology and applied the latest microbial genomic tools to different ecosystems, such as coral reefs and the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Subsequently, I transferred these skills and concepts to the realm of the human microbiome when I joined the laboratory of Dr. Susan Lynch, Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), Director of the Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine, and Co-founder of Siolta Therapeutics. Dr. Lynch’s focus on the human microbiome in human health from an ecological perspective was a perfect fit for my particular interests, background, and skill set. It is there that we worked on rationally designing microbial medicines for the prevention of disease based on years of work performed by Dr. Lynch and her collaborators.

The decision to translate our academic findings into a clinical application resulted at yet another convergence point, one in which the science, interest in the field, and a compelling sense of necessity all aligned. It was at this point that Dr. Lynch and I co-founded Siolta in partnership with Samir Kaul, Founding Partner and Managing Director at Khosla Ventures, in order to translate this ground-breaking research into innovative clinical applications.

Why has Siolta chosen to focus on pediatric/early life microbial networks?

The answer is simple, our approach is science-driven. We are focusing on early life because this is where the science is telling us we could have the most transformative impact. There is now substantial evidence that the developing microbiome is instrumental in establishing and maintaining healthy immune responses. Moreover, disruption to this process is thought to underlie a myriad of chronic diseases, including allergic, metabolic, and neurodevelopmental diseases; all of which are increasing in incidence at alarming rates in our children. This unique early-life window has the potential to be instrumental in approaching disease from an innovative prevention standpoint. We are developing a method where the underlying causes of chronic disease are addressed through early intervention, rather than treating downstream symptoms later in disease development. This has a lot of positive outcomes – lower costs, fewer side-effects and the potential to eliminate the long-term treatment modalities used for asthma and allergy sufferers today.

How does understanding of the microbiome support your work around therapeutic interventions?

What we have learned over the last decade is that the human microbiome, like any other ecosystem, begins as a relatively naïve system. Early “founder” microorganisms play an important role in shaping the local environment in a way that subsequently impacts the additional accumulation of diversity. This is important not only from a perspective of what microbes are present, but more importantly for what functionality the community represents. Notably, the science suggests that different founding communities impact the trajectory of immune development in different ways, and likely microbial metabolism is one of the mechanisms by which they do this. Thus, our growing understanding of the human microbiome and its interconnectedness to our health has both identified potential mechanisms of action and novel strategies for addressing disease.

What role does metabolomics play in understanding the complex associations between microbial activity in the gut and human health?

Metabolomics provides another layer of analyses that allows us to more directly address the functional contribution of the microbiome to human physiology. It adds to the tool box that we have available to better characterize both general phenomena, through untargeted metabolomics, and more specific mechanisms of action, through targeted metabolite analysis. Both of which are important drivers of research and development in this emerging field.

How has Metabolon’s untargeted approach to metabolomics provided benefit in uncovering what the microbiome is doing to impact human health?

You can refer to the published work from Dr. Lynch’s lab to see how untargeted metabolomics has helped characterize early-life signatures of infants at risk for developing allergy and asthma. Their work establishes that different microbial profiles are associated with different metabolic signatures, immunological impacts, and disease outcomes1,2. Furthermore, they use this approach to identify specific metabolites associated with high risk infants for allergy and asthma, as well as the associated microbial genes capable of producing such metabolites, that are capable of impeding immune tolerance3. Thus, Dr. Lynch’s work established a potential mechanistic link between early life microbiome perturbations and disease development later in life, while also identifying a potential biomarker for high risk infants.

How will Metabolon’s untargeted approach to metabolomics provide benefit in uncovering what the microbiome is doing among the subjects in your studies?

At Siolta, we are also utilizing both untargeted and targeted metabolomic approaches to help characterize the overall metabolic signatures associated with treatment and response and potentially provide insight into patient stratification for more precise therapeutic approaches moving forward. We start with untargeted metabolomics, casting a wide net to characterize general metabolic shifts across different pathways and to identify the biomarkers that we may not know are there yet. Once the analysis is complete and we have pinpointed the biomarkers we want to focus on, we work to develop a targeted assay. In this way, Metabolon has the capacity to support our work through the complete research continuum.

How does metabolomics help make genomics smarter?

The genomic revolution that has occurred over the past few decades is fundamental to our current understanding of complex microbial communities, including the human microbiome. The resulting advancements in technology have led to increased awareness of the role microbial communities play in environmental and human health, including the vast functional potential harbored by these complex systems. Metabolomics, generally speaking, allows us to investigate a step further, moving from what potential is present to what functions are being fulfilled. This is a critical step in pushing the boundaries of our knowledge beyond who and what is present and moving towards functional characterization and finer resolution of metabolic networks.

View for our webinar – to hear more from Dr. Kimes and other researchers who are successfully applying metabolomics to their microbiome research.

References:

1. Fujimura KE, Sitarik AR, Havstad S, Lin DL, Levan S, Fadrosh D, et al. Neonatal gut microbiota associates with childhood multisensitized atopy and T cell differentiation. Nature Medicine. 2016Dec;22(10):1187–91.

2. Durack J, Kimes NE, Lin DL, Rauch M, Mckean M, Mccauley K, et al. Delayed gut microbiota development in high-risk for asthma infants is temporarily modifiable by Lactobacillus supplementation. Nature Communications. 2018;9(1).

3. Levan SR, Stamnes KA, Lin DL, Panzer AR, Fukui Eundefined, McCauley K, et al. Elevated faecal 12,13-diHOME concentration in neonates at high risk for asthma is produced by gut bacteria and impedes immune tolerance. Nature Microbiology. 2019Jul22;4:1851–61.

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06Aug

There is Truth to the Adage “Get Your Beauty Rest”

August 6, 2019 Metabolon Microbiome, Working with Metabolon 35

The fountain of youth is what most people desire as they begin to notice faint lines of wisdom. Factors from a person’s biology or genetics to their environment and lifestyle, including sleep habits, alter metabolite levels affecting the health and appearance of skin. These mechanisms lead to the aging process long before we see the impact on our skin.

The fountain of youth is what most people desire as they begin to notice faint lines of wisdom. Factors from a person’s biology or genetics to their environment and lifestyle, including sleep habits, alter metabolite levels affecting the health and appearance of skin. These mechanisms lead to the aging process long before we see the impact on our skin.

Estee Lauder Companies is leveraging metabolomics, with circadian rhythm, to deepen its knowledge of skin conditions to improve the health of aging skin. Estee Lauder Companies presented their findings at the World Congress of Dermatology 2019 in Milan, Italy, during a symposium titled “Metabolomics as a New Diagnostic to Assess Skin Health” on Wednesday, June 12, 2019. The poster can be viewed here.

During the symposium, renowned circadian rhythm expert Paolo Sassone-Corsi, Ph.D., of the University of California – Irvine, highlighted how circadian cycles impact almost every element of our biology, including skin health. Next, Metabolon’s Kirk Beebe, Ph.D., presented how Metabolon’s Precision Metabolomics platform can provide deep insight into an array of biological processes surrounding skin health. Bringing it all together, Estee Lauder Companies Vice President of Skin Biology & BioActives, Nadine Pernodet, Ph.D., presented results of the first ever metabolomics study demonstrating temporal facial skin metabolome differences in young and mature skin, with and without treatment in vivo, using non-invasive methods.

Skin_Metabolites_Rhythm_Kirk

What is the key takeaway?

“Figure 8 in the poster presentation says it all,” says Dr. Beebe. “It shows that with proper treatment, the rhythmicity for many of the skin metabolites can be reestablished, helping to synchronize skin with its natural youthful rhythm of dynamic repair. The blue line denotes young skin, the red is for mature, and the green represents mature skin treated with Estee Lauder’s night repair. These are powerful metabolomic insights.”

In a recent press release, Estee Lauder Companies notes it is the first in the industry to use metabolomics with time to more thoroughly understand factors of skin repair efficiency and damage accumulation and their relationship to skin circadian rhythm. The company plans to continue to apply this knowledge to formulate products that can address and improve optimal skin processes, leading to younger-looking skin. #thenightisyours.

At Metabolon, we realize the importance of metabolomics in understanding skin biology and have invested a tremendous effort in developing methods and tools for skin research. The tools we use for skin analysis, such as skin biopsies and tape strips, will not only promote a better understanding of the basic principles governing skin biology but will also become a frontline approach for understanding the complex interaction between the host and microbiota that govern skin health.

For more information on understanding the skin metabolome and microbiome, please contact us hello@metabolon.com.

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09Jul

The Road Less Traveled: The Faster Path to Biological Insights

July 9, 2018 Metabolon Capabilities, Working with Metabolon 34

Researchers continue to mine the genome for clues that assist in understanding susceptibility to disease, selection of targets for combating disease, and the biomarkers indicating response. Surprisingly, though, a fast and valuable source of data that can either lead or strengthen this pursuit is not always part of the equation.

What’s Missing in Your Research?

While we should retain our commitment to understanding biology through standard cell and molecular biology tools, it is important to remind ourselves that metabolites have been, and continue to be, a staple for clinical and in vivo decision making.

The Road Less Traveled: The Faster Path to Biological Insights
  • Well-known metabolites, such as glucose, cholesterol, creatinine, bilirubin and thyroid hormone, are used as routine barometers for assessing diabetes, heart disease, renal, hepatic and thyroid function.
  • In screening newborns for inborn errors of metabolism (IEMs), the levels of certain blood metabolites are used as surrogates for signifying a clinical condition arising from a genetic mutation.
  • Importantly, more subtle phenotypes, such as susceptibility to a disease, response to a drug, or prognosis, may also have a biochemical “fingerprint.”

There is a strong, well-established association between the metabolite and the phenotype. In fact, this understanding formed the basis of almost a century of metabolic investigation from famous researchers including Krebs, Warburg, Cori and Pasteur.

Despite this, the last several decades have intensely focused on the molecular genetic basis of biology. Metabolism research didn’t fade because it lacked value in understanding biology; it was simply the genuine and vigorous interest in gene function that relegated it to a less favored life science discipline.

Although undeniably important as our foundational blueprint, DNA reflects the risk or potential for disease. In many instances, though, a complex network of genes, transcripts, proteins and regulation conspires with the environment and microbiome to result in a physiological or phenotypic change.

Key to the value of metabolites is that they may reflect all of these factors, and metabolites themselves may play an integral role in the activity of genes and proteins through epigenetic alterations and post-translational modifications.

From a biomarker discovery perspective, metabolites are particularly attractive since they can be identified from any biological sample type, including cells, media, tissues, body fluids, and even exhaled breath condensate.

In addition, since metabolism is central to all living things, many pathways are highly conserved, making findings particularly translatable across species. Therefore, if a biomarker is identified in a pre-clinical model, it has a strong potential to have relevance in human disease.

Advances in Metabolomics Technology Speed the Path

So, why aren’t metabolites routinely surveyed to address biomarker and R&D objectives? Aside from the genomic focus mentioned above, another issue at the heart of this question is the fact that building the technology is extremely challenging. Until recently, technologies that could fully exploit the information embedded in the metabolome did not exist.

Given the chemical diversity of metabolites (e.g., carbohydrates, organic acids, lipids, etc.), immense technical challenges existed in tapping into this data stream, but a key advance came from the development of software tools that could provide rapid metabolite identification and QC of the data. Today, metabolomics, the technology for widespread metabolic analysis, offers an extremely effective, accurate means for examining metabolism.

Metabolomics can be done on an industrial scale resulting in the discovery of novel biomarkers and actionable biological insight. As appreciated by over a century of biochemistry and contemporary clinical testing, surveying metabolism offers an integrated vantage-point for understanding complex biological states, such as disease or drug response. The signatures that accompany these states can serve as clinically useful biomarkers.

We Have a Biomarker! What’s Next?

Metabolomics frequently produces unexpected biomarkers and disease insight, even in extensively studied disease states. Perhaps the best example of this is in cancer, where it is now appreciated that all major oncogenic drivers induce a change in the metabolic phenotype.

Metabolomic studies in recent years, as evidenced by the proliferation of peer-reviewed publications (including top journal publications), have led to breakthroughs in disease understanding and treatments. Like genomics, metabolomics offers value in any biological research area. In fact, metabolomics has resulted in successful outcomes in numerous fields, including oncology, metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease, respiratory and rare diseases.

No matter the disease area, metabolites are an important probe of phenotypic or physiological inquiry that goes beyond genomics. Metabolomics has matured to a point where meaningful advancement of biological insights and identification of sensitive and specific biomarkers can occur in a range of different diseases.

Metabolomics applications continue to grow and provide unprecedented knowledge for clinicians and life sciences researchers across many industries and academic and government organizations. This expanding technology for biomarker discovery is now routinely used in disease research, pharmaceutical development, nutrition and agriculture. Metabolomics is also rapidly moving into clinical applications to promote wellness and diagnose and treat diseases.
If you’d like to learn how to add metabolomics to your research, please contact us.

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