Metabolomic Diagnostics and Human Digital Image

Abstract

The existing clinical laboratory practice has limitations in terms of specificity and sensitivity of diagnosis, making the introduction of new methods in medicine more topical. Application of ‘omics’ technologies, especially metabolomics, allows overcoming these limitations. The composition of blood metabolites reflects the physical state of an organism at the molecular level. The analysis of blood metabolome can serve as effective means of diagnosis, implementation of which in healthcare is timely and relevant. This paper demonstrates the versatility of metabolomic diagnostics, its applicability to various diseases. We discussed the standard of human digital image, which includes the metabolomic data sufficient to make an accurate assessment of general health and carry out precision diagnostics of a wide range of diseases.

Defining Blood Plasma and Serum Metabolome by GC-MS

“…These patterns can be compared with each other (for example, when analyzing the metabolome of healthy humans and diseased ones), and only then metabolites are identified. However, there are examples of successful barcoding, when characteristic peak patterns can be used to create a digital image of a person without directly identifying compounds [188].…”

“…In this light, to increase the number of annotations, bioinformatics algorithms can be used to simulate mass spectra that are absent in libraries based on structural similarity with related compounds already detected by LC-MS/MS [202,203]. On the other side, the transition from direct identification of compounds in the metabolome to barcoding of m/z features looks especially promising [188].…”

Metabolomics Community in Russia: History of Development, Key Participants, and Results

“…This signature is expected to describe global biochemical aberrations that reflect patterns of variance in states of wellness, more accurately describe specific diseases and their progression, and greatly aid in differential diagnosis" [71]. The work of scientists from Russia dedicated to metabolomic blood analysis, human digital imaging, and label-free data standardization for clinical metabolomics is aimed at supporting this initiative [23][24][25].…”

“…The low molecular weight substances are extracted from a blood sample and injected directly into the ionization source of the mass spectrometer (2). The mass spectrum of blood metabolites (3) obtained by DIMS are processed (4) following the protocol presented in the publication [25]. The personal blood metabolome (5) obtained from the data processing is used to create a human digital image, which is presented as a QR code (6).…”

“…The personal blood metabolome (5) obtained from the data processing is used to create a human digital image, which is presented as a QR code (6). Adapted from [25].…”