The Potential of Metabolomics in Biomedical Applications

Abstract

The metabolome offers a dynamic, comprehensive, and precise picture of the phenotype. Current high-throughput technologies have allowed the discovery of relevant metabolites that characterize a wide variety of human phenotypes with respect to health, disease, drug monitoring, and even aging. Metabolomics, parallel to genomics, has led to the discovery of biomarkers and has aided in the understanding of a diversity of molecular mechanisms, highlighting its application in precision medicine. This review focuses on the metabolomics that can be applied to improve human health, as well as its trends and impacts in metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, longevity, the exposome, liquid biopsy development, and pharmacometabolomics. The identification of distinct metabolomic profiles will help in the discovery and improvement of clinical strategies to treat human disease. In the years to come, metabolomics will become a tool routinely applied to diagnose and monitor health and disease, aging, or drug development. Biomedical applications of metabolomics can already be foreseen to monitor the progression of metabolic diseases, such as obesity and diabetes, using branched-chain amino acids, acylcarnitines, certain phospholipids, and genomics; these can assess disease severity and predict a potential treatment. Future endeavors should focus on determining the applicability and clinical utility of metabolomic-derived markers and their appropriate implementation in large-scale clinical settings.

The Differences of Metabolites in Different Parts of the Brain Induced by Shuxuetong Injection against Cerebral Ischemia-Reperfusion and Its Corresponding Mechanism

“…Over time, metabolomics has evolved from an exploratory tool for qualitative studies to a more mature and complete biochemical technique for quantitative studies [ 17 ]. The identification of different metabolomic profiles helps to identify and improve clinical treatment strategies for diseases [ 18 ]. The brain has a high level and specific metabolic activity that is sensitive to ischemic injury [ 19 ].…”

Perspectives from metabolomics in the early diagnosis and prognosis of gestational diabetes mellitus

“…Proton NMR is widely used in metabolomics studies due to its nondestructive nature and ability to simultaneously measure many organic compounds present in biological samples. However, the low sensitivity of proton NMR, which permits the detection of metabolites only at the micromolar level, is the major limitation of NMR as a comprehensive technique ( 28 ). Conversely, MS-based methods provide increased sensitivity and the ability to assay a diverse range of cellular metabolites over a varied polarity range.…”

Development of a Novel Targeted Metabolomic LC-QqQ-MS Method in Allergic Inflammation

“…Metabolomics is the science that focuses on the metabolism of living organisms. It is a useful tool to discover new molecular mechanisms in diseases through the application of a non-targeted approach [ 8 , 14 , 15 ].…”