Advanced Metabolomics-Based Methods for Biomarker Discovery and Systems Biology Research

Professor Daniel Raftery

Dept. of Chemistry, Purdue University, Indiana, USA

While the analysis of biofluid samples by 1D NMR and pattern recognition methods have proven effective at classifying populations such as “disease” and “healthy,” these methods tend to focus on the metabolites with high concentration. New NMR approaches such as selective TOCSY experiments and chemical derivatization methods are being developed which focus on both major and minor components to provide an improved ability to discriminate similar samples. We can also combine or correlate the results of NMR with several new and advanced MS methods to provide additional information for identifying putative biomarkers to distinguish diseased and healthy populations and to learn more about perturbed complex biological systems. The combination of NMR and MS improves our ability to classify cohorts and to identify additional potential biomarkers. Mapping the observed changes on to the metabolic pathways provides insight regarding the complex and correlated network of metabolic perturbations that occur in disease. Examples using both small animal and human studies will be discussed..