Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology - Volume 12, Issue 7, 2011

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 essential Read More

The use of tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) for screening of inherited metabolic disease in newborns has afforded many unique opportunities in the understanding of the benefits early their early detection, diagnosis and treatment. From the standpoint of the laboratory and modern analytical methods, the use of MS based analysis demonstrated that a multiple metabolite-multiple disease screen-one method approach expande Read More

Metabolic profiling employs a combination of sophisticated analytical tools to obtain global “untargeted” metabolic profiles from tissues, cells or biofluids. The resulting complex multivariate data are then modeled statistically to reveal differences between classes (e.g. dosed vs. control) and identify discriminatory metabolites. Metabolic profiling has a wide range of applications, encompassing nutrition, disease diagnosis, epid Read More

In metabolomics studies there is a clear increase of data. This indicates the necessity of both having a battery of suitable analysis methods and validation procedures able to handle large amounts of data. In this review, an overview of the metabolomics data processing pipeline is presented. A selection of recently developed and most cited data processing methods is discussed. In addition, commonly used chemometric and Read More

Comprehensive analytical technologies are rapidly becoming a cornerstone of modern nutritional sciences. Two of these technologies, mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), have proven highly informative for the global analysis of metabolites, commonly referred to as metabolomics. Metabolomics provides a powerful approach to study small molecules in order to better understand the im Read More

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is being analyzed for the diagnosis of a variety of neurological diseases. Among the methods employed, metabolomics and proteomics are increasingly gaining popularity. At present, sensitivity and, in particular, specificity are limited in CSF metabolomics by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Nonetheless, progress is being made by studying more and more well-defined and homogene Read More

Oxylipins (e.g. eicosanoids) are endogenous signaling molecules that are formed from fatty acids by mono- or dioxygenase-catalyzed oxygenation and have been shown to play an important role in pathophysiological processes in the lung. These lipid mediators have been extensively for their role in inflammation in a broad swathe of respiratory diseases including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fi Read More

Metabolomics is only truly unbiased if the whole metabolome is captured. Current metabolomics technologies capture only a part of the metabolome and therefore produce inherently biased results. Important factors that introduce such bias into a metabolomic analysis may include but are not limited to, timing of sample collection, the sample collection procedure, sample processing, stabilization, stability and storag Read More

Hundreds of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are released from human body fluids. Some of them are produced by endogenous metabolic processes in and on the body, and others are derived from the environment. Expressions of some endogenous VOCs can be affected by pathophysiological changes, and several disease-specific volatile biomarkers have been identified and used as diagnostic aids. Monitorin Read More

Metabolomics and metabolic flux analysis (MFA) are powerful tools in the arsenal of methodologies of systems biology. Currently, metabolomics techniques are applied routinely for biomarker determination. However, standard metabolomics techniques only provide static information about absolute or relative metabolite amounts. The application of stable-isotope tracers has opened up a new dimension to metabolomics by Read More