Integrated metabolomic NMR spectroscopy in neurological and cancer research

Prof. Norbert Lutz

Université de la Méditerranée, France

Over the past few decades, metabolic magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) has contributed an increasing amount of information helpful for our understanding of the biochemical processes underlying pathological conditions. However, variations in individual tissue metabolite concentrations or ratios are not generally sufficient to characterize specific biochemical mechanisms. Therefore, a metabolomic approach is increasingly being employed. for tissue analysis. The purpose of this method is to reveal metabolic patterns through combined evaluation of a large number of metabolite MRS signals. This presentation describes specific advantages of integrating different metabolomic MRS techniques with other methods of biomedical analysis. The integration of multiple metabolic and other parameters allows one to characterize biochemical mechanisms in more detail than would be possible with the determination of a limited number of metabolite levels only.  

Several examples of integrated metabolomics are given, based on neurological and cancer studies. First, methodological requirements needed for the quantitation of a large number of metabolites are described. These include the optimization of all steps involved in sample preparation, but also in multinuclear MRS data acquisition and processing. It is shown that the number of peaks that can be reliably evaluated in one-dimensional MR spectra, can be significantly enhanced when appropriate optimization strategies are employed, notably for tissue extracts. Second, the integration of metabolic parameters with other biochemical, physiological and immunological data, as well as further biological and clinical parameters, is shown to reveal information crucial for our understanding of pathological mechanisms.