oa Editorial [Hot Topic: Frontiers of Metabolomics - Going from Bench to Bedside (Guest Editor: Anders Nordstrom)]

It is my great pleasure to present this issue of Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology covering the area of metabolomics and specifically how this area of research currently is transitioning from the lab bench to the patient bedside. The term “metabolome” was coined by Professor Stephen Oliver in 1998 in relation to the “transcriptome” and “proteome” terminology. According to this definition, the “metabolome” is essentially the entire complement of small endogenous/exogenous molecules in a cell, tissue or whole organism at any given time. Metabolomics therefore becomes the experimental discipline dealing with the measurement of the “metabolome” and numerous more exact definitions of metabolomics have been proposed. To some extent, small endogenous molecules are the ultimate manifestation of the genes. Profiling small molecules therefore reveals aspects of gene activity as well as protein activity. The notion to measure concentration profiles of small molecules in order to gain insight into human physiology and pathology has been around for a very long time. With the advent of commercial gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS) in the mid 1960's some real analytical power was brought into this game and publications on the topic of “metabolite profiling” started to appear. In the 1980's nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) added more strength to the field. Liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LC-MS) paired with some serious developments in data analysis tools such as the chromatography alignment software XCMS developed in Professor Gary Siuzdak's lab at The Scripps Research Institute, have made it possible to produce very comprehensive quantitative profiles of the metabolome. Another significant contribution particularly towards human metabolomics is the Human Metabolome Project headed by Professor David Wishart at University of Alberta. This project includes the Human Metabolome Database that which contains information about over 7900 metabolites found in the human body. The advancements within the filed of metabolite profiling and metabolomics over the last two decades have been made possible through developments in analytical hardware and software. Small endogenous molecules play an instrumental role as biomarkers daily in clinics world wide today. Diseases like diabetes is constantly monitored via measurement of glucose and thousands of new born babies are screened daily for inborn errors of metabolism. Hopefully can today's metabolomics research result in novel discoveries of shifts in small molecule concentrations that can be associated with for example a disease state or drug efficacy and potentially can these shifts acts as guides towards new drug targets. The great contributions to this issue of Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology is covering some of the cutting edge work in metabolomics and provides examples of how metabolomics today is moving into the hospitals and the patient bed sides. Donald Chace and Alan Spitzer at Pediatrix Medical Group, Florida, USA presents an excellent review of how tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) has been employed over the last 20 years for screening of inherited metabolic disease in newborns. They discuss lessons learned, and how these experiences can be used to further develop the filed of multiplexed MS/MS assays in newborn screening applications. M. Anas Kamleh, Konstantina Spagou and Elizabeth J. Want at Imperial College, London, UK have written a very exciting review article about technologies used for metabolomics and the role of metabolomics within disease diagnosis, toxicology and personalized healthcare. Mattias Eliasson, Stefan Rannar and Johan Trygg at Umea University, Umea, Sweden discusses some of the recent and most cited data processing methods and presents and overview over the metabolomics data processing pipeline. Michael A. Zulyniak and David M. Mutch at University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada have written an in depth review that on the topic of metabolomics and nutritional health. It highlights the importance and benefit of identifying biomarkers that accurately reflect changes in nutrient intake and metabolism as well as molecular pathways by which nutrients affect health and disease. N.W. Lutz, P.J. Cozzone at Centre de Resonance Magnetique Biologique et Medicale, Universite Aix-Marseille, France have written a review article on the topic of NMR metabolomics of Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for variety of neurological diseases and particularly multiple sclerosis. They dissect currently existing results discuss the potential and limitations of this approach......