Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry system for metabolite-based precision medicine

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Metabolites are small biochemicals present in every human cell, tissue and biofluid. These metabolites are essential for life, are primarily involved in metabolism and include sugars and fats which are important for the generation of energy through metabolism of food. Metabolites have other important roles which help us live including the construction of other biochemicals (proteins and DNA), construction of cell walls with fats and the control of chemical processes in the body in response to environmental changes including eating and exercise. The amounts of metabolites in our bodies change in response to environmental changes or in relation to the development and progression of diseases. As examples, the metabolite lactic acid quickly increases in amounts in muscle tissue and blood during exercise and the metabolite glucose increases in blood in the disease diabetes. In scientific research we study metabolites to understand how we age and how disease processes start and progress. This research can help us understand how diseases develop, help us identify new treatments for diseases and help us diagnose a disease or define the risk of developing a disease early which reduces the level and intensity of treatment and increases the probability of long term survival. The research to be performed will apply the study of thousands of metabolites and this scientific technique is called metabolomics. We will apply a scientific instrument called liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to allow detection of metabolites based on their weight as different metabolites have different weights (masses). Metabolomics allows the study of thousands of metabolites in discovery research, identification of a small number of important metabolites related to the clinical question and translation in to clinical practice. Metabolites are already used for disease diagnosis including glucose for diagnosis of diabetes. Metabolomics will be applied to study a range of diseases including cancers (lung, blood colorectal), cardiovascular diseases, hormone-driven diseases and women's health/pregnancy disorders.Importantly, not all humans are the same in how diseases develop and response to different treatments. Traditional medicine treated everyone as if they were the same. A new era of precision medicine is upon us and is an innovative approach to tailoring disease prevention and treatment that takes into account differences in people's genes, environments, and lifestyles. The goal of precision medicine is to target the right treatments to the right patients at the right time. The studies performed will help develop new precision medicine tools for early disease diagnosis or for development of different treatments.