Metabolomics and Predictive Medicine
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070226/full/446008a.html
Metabolomics is the study of the substrates, products and intermediates of the body's biochemical reactions. Though the field is relatively new and has been low key compared to genomics and proteomics, its potential for use in diagnostic medicine has encouraged new interest. According to a recent Nature news article, metabolomics may have an advantage in predictive and diagnostic medicine when compared to genomics and proteomics because "small changes in the activity of a gene or protein often create a much larger change in metabolite levels."
The ultimate goal will be the ability to analyze samples of body fluid to assess the relative risk for developing various diseases or adverse reactions to certain drugs. However, in order to reach this goal, a comprehensive database of metabolites and their association with disease at different concentrations must be created. This is a difficult feat because the composition of metabolites in a sample vary depending on the body fluid tested, the time of the day that the sample was taken and the testing procedure used. Furthermore, results are sensitive to short term changes imposed by drug and food intake and may have a great amount of variation between individuals.
The development of metabolomics will require a large amount of data from individuals with different ethnicities and lifestyles. However, it seems to me that one of the big advantages of metabolomics is that the tests developed may be more time efficient and cheaper to perform than tests involving gene expression and protein production.
Metabolomics is the study of the substrates, products and intermediates of the body's biochemical reactions. Though the field is relatively new and has been low key compared to genomics and proteomics, its potential for use in diagnostic medicine has encouraged new interest. According to a recent Nature news article, metabolomics may have an advantage in predictive and diagnostic medicine when compared to genomics and proteomics because "small changes in the activity of a gene or protein often create a much larger change in metabolite levels."
The ultimate goal will be the ability to analyze samples of body fluid to assess the relative risk for developing various diseases or adverse reactions to certain drugs. However, in order to reach this goal, a comprehensive database of metabolites and their association with disease at different concentrations must be created. This is a difficult feat because the composition of metabolites in a sample vary depending on the body fluid tested, the time of the day that the sample was taken and the testing procedure used. Furthermore, results are sensitive to short term changes imposed by drug and food intake and may have a great amount of variation between individuals.
The development of metabolomics will require a large amount of data from individuals with different ethnicities and lifestyles. However, it seems to me that one of the big advantages of metabolomics is that the tests developed may be more time efficient and cheaper to perform than tests involving gene expression and protein production.
posted by Mei Zhan at 11:09 PM
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