Metabonomics technologies and their applications in physiological monitoring, drug safety assessment and disease diagnosis

Abstract

In this review, metabonomics, a combination of data-rich analytical chemical measurements and chemometrics for profiling metabolism in complex systems, is described and its applications are reviewed. Metabonomics is typically carried out using biofluids or tissue samples. The relevance of the technique is reviewed in relation to other '-omics', and it is shown how the methods can be applied to physiological evaluation, drug safety assessment, characterization of genetically modified animal models of disease, diagnosis of human disease, and drug therapy monitoring. The different types of analytical data, mainly from nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry, are summarized. The outputs from a metabonomics study allow sample classification, for example according to phenotype, drug safety or disease diagnosis, and interpretation of the reasons for classification yields information on combination biomarkers of effect. Transcriptomic and metabonomic data is currently being further integrated into a holistic understanding of systems biology. An assessment of the possible future role and impact of metabonomics is presented.

Metabolomic mapping of atypical antipsychotic effects in schizophrenia

“…33 The metabolic state of an individual reflects what has been encoded by the genome and modified by environmental factors an 'environment' that -in the clinical setting -includes drug exposure. 34,35 A deeper understanding of global perturbations in biochemical pathways in complex diseases such as schizophrenia and upon treatment with antipsychotics could provide valuable insights about mechanisms of disease, drug effects and biomarkers. 35 Holmes et al 36 used an NMR-based metabolomics platform to evaluate a subset of pathways implicated in intermediary metabolism and established that glucose and acetate were modified in cerebrospinal fluid of patients with schizophrenia.…”

“…34,35 A deeper understanding of global perturbations in biochemical pathways in complex diseases such as schizophrenia and upon treatment with antipsychotics could provide valuable insights about mechanisms of disease, drug effects and biomarkers. 35 Holmes et al 36 used an NMR-based metabolomics platform to evaluate a subset of pathways implicated in intermediary metabolism and established that glucose and acetate were modified in cerebrospinal fluid of patients with schizophrenia. The findings reported here represent to our knowledge, a first attempt to map global lipid changes in schizophrenia before and after treatment with three antipsychotics using a specialized metabolomics platform referred to as lipidomics.…”

UPLC-based metabonomic applications for discovering biomarkers of diseases in clinical chemistry

“…It is used to characterize the biochemical patterns of the endogenous metabolites in cells, body fluids or tissues for physiological evaluation, disease diagnosis and disease prognosis [3]. In contrast to classical biochemical approaches that often focus on a single metabolite, metabonomics reveals a collection of molecules which covers a broad range of small molecules such as lipids, amino acids, sterols, nucleic acids, peptides, organic acids, carbohydrates and vitamins and as such provides a comprehensive overview of the impact of the pathophysiological processes or pharmacological interventions of interest on metabolism and metabolic dynamics.…”

Metabolic effects of Hedyotis diffusa on rats bearing Walker 256 tumor revealed by NMR‐based metabolomics

“…Recently, NMR method has undertaken more and more tasks in clarifying significant changes in tumor metabolism and exploring for candidate "biomarkers." [16] Aiming at characterizing the metabolism of Walker 256 tumor to identify new biomarkers and new targets for further study of therapeutic interventions, NMR metabolomics has been extensively used in cancer research. [17][18][19] In this study, we made a novel attempt to explore the potential biomarkers related to anticancer activities of H. diffusa based on the NMR nontargeted metabolomics.…”