Metabolomics Applications

Central to metabolomics is the aim of identifying potential small molecule biomarkers that correlate to a disease, drug toxicity, or genetic or environmental variation. Metabolomics has a high impact on the way how research is conducted in many application areas.

Validated biomarkers in clinical research or public health studies can form the basis for new diagnostic assays, and lead the way to help establish truly personalized medicine.

Metabolomics applied in pharmaceutical research can provide early information on drug toxicity, one central aim in pharmaceutical discovery.

Functional genomics studies to unravel gene functions and interactions in bacterial, plant, animal and human research benefit from metabolic profiling approaches since changes in small molecule concentrations are closely related to the observed phenotype. Metabolomics applied in Nutrition and Food revolutionized the detection of food adulteration and assists breeders in strategic trait optimization.

Also for YOUR metabolomics application Bruker offers class leading solutions to generate answers based on latest innovations for hyphenated NMR, LC-MS, GC-MS and FT-IR technologies.

 

In clinical research metabolomics strategies are applied in model systems such as cell cultures or animals up to large scale epidemiological studies as these approaches hold great potential to detect new biomarkers for diseases. Validated biomarkers can serve in diagnostics as well as in monitoring drug therapy - ultimately enabling real perzonalized medicine.

Validated biomarkers will also shed light on the molecular basis for diseases and point to novel drug targets, which is of primary importance in pharmaceutical research.

One example for the impact of metabolomics in human health studies is an extremely promising project in NMR based analysis helping to deliver efficient, reliable screening of inborn errors in newborn health. It has the potential to generate a push-button, high throughput screening solution offering simultaneous non-targeted and targeted analysis.  

In addition to NMR, Bruker´s LC-MS, and GC-MS based metabolomics solutions perfectly match the requirements for comprehensive metabolic profiling, sample throughput, biomarker detection, identification, validation and quantification.

The later that a molecule or molecular class is lost from the drug development pipeline, the higher the financial cost. Minimizing attrition is therefore one of the most important aims of a pharmaceutical discovery program.

Novel technologies that increase the probability of making the right choice early save resources, and promote safety, efficacy and profitability.

Metabolomics is a systems approach for studying in vivo metabolic profiles, which promises to provide information on drug toxicity, disease processes and gene function at several stages in the discovery and-development process.

Pharma, Metabolomics, Phenomics, Exposomics and non-targeted screening have different aims. But with that said, all these disciplines share some common needs, like rapid de-replication of compounds of interest (drug metabolites, possible live style or environmental exposure markers).

The integrated software solution MetaboScape^® addresses common needs for advancing pharma, metabolomics, lipidomics, non-target screening and exposome research:

• Local metabolite prediction by BioTransformer¹ enables secure drug metabolite annotation in MetaboScape^®
• Support for multifactorial time-course experiments in MetaboScape^® supports semi-quantitative description of metabolic pathways in drug metabolism and spend media analysis for (Bio)pharma research 

From raw materials to the final consumer product, the monitoring of the production and distribution cycle of food is of importance with regard to safety, authenticity and quality of food for producers, consumers and regulatory agencies. To achieve this, precise and accurate analytical tools are needed in order to ensure origin, properties, falsification, and reliability of food. The NMR based JuiceScreener is a perfect example how Bruker addressed this need with a push button solution in juice assessment applying a Targeted and Non-Targeted Multi Marker Analysis.

In addition to food control, metabolomics approaches are successfully applied in food and nutrition trait optimization. In particular metabolomics based research to enhance nutrition and taste characteristics holds great potential for the agricultural industry. Targeted as well as non-targeted metabolomics approaches are readily enabled by Bruker´s product portfolio for comprehensive small molecule profiling based on complementary LC-MS, GC-MS, NMR and FT-IR technology.

Metabolomics has a huge impact on plant physiology research. Although „classical“ plant biochemistry has been studied for many decades, the holistic approach of metabolic profiling found its way in many research groups.

Non-targeted approaches can provide important information on unexpected metabolic changes induced in plants by biotic or abiotic factors as well as in unraveling gene functions in functional genomics studies.

These non-targeted as well as targeted approaches are readily enabled by Bruker's Metabolomics solutions. In particular the combination of complementary technologies such as NMR, LC-MS and GC-MS perfectly address the need for a comprehensive analysis of small molecules.

An integral part of the Metabolomics workflow is Bruker´s tailored software to quickly pinpoint relevant information and generate knowledge.

Microorganisms have a long-standing tradition as a source of biologically active small molecules – termed “secondary metabolites“. Besides activity-guided isolation, metabolomics based strategies are becoming increasingly successful in revealing additional natural products. These approaches hold great promise for uncovering novel secondary metabolites from bacterial and fungal strains. Examples for biologically active compounds are novel antibiotics to target resistant pathogens.

Microorganisms are used in industrial scale production of biologically active small molecules, as well as other target compounds like amino acids and vitamins used e.g. for food supplementation. In order to increase the production of the desired product metabolomics is often applied to direct rational strain design based on genetic engineering. This approach often goes in hand with functional genomics studies to unravel gene functions in basic research. In summary metabolomics has become an integral part in microbial research.

Bruker’s LC-MS, GC-MS and NMR based metabolomics solutions perfectly match the requirements for comprehensive metabolic profiling, sample throughput, compound identification, validation and quantification.