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

代谢物是存在于每个人类细胞、组织和生物液中的小型生物化学物质。这些代谢物对生命至关重要，主要参与新陈代谢，包括糖和脂肪，它们对通过食物新陈代谢产生能量非常重要。代谢物还有帮助我们生存的其他重要作用，包括构建其他生物化学物质(蛋白质和DNA)，构建含有脂肪的细胞壁，以及控制体内的化学过程，以应对环境变化，包括饮食和锻炼。我们体内的代谢物的数量随着环境的变化或与疾病的发展和进展有关而变化。例如，在运动过程中，代谢物乳酸在肌肉组织和血液中的数量迅速增加，而糖尿病患者的代谢物葡萄糖在血液中增加。在科学研究中，我们研究代谢物以了解我们是如何衰老的，以及疾病过程是如何开始和发展的。这项研究可以帮助我们了解疾病是如何发展的，帮助我们找到治疗疾病的新方法，并帮助我们诊断疾病或及早确定疾病发展的风险，从而降低治疗水平和强度，增加长期生存的可能性。将要进行的研究将应用对数千种代谢物的研究，这种科学技术被称为代谢组学。由于不同的代谢物有不同的重量(质量)，我们将应用一种名为液-质联用的科学仪器，根据其重量来检测代谢物。代谢组学允许在发现研究中对数千种代谢物进行研究，识别与临床问题相关的少量重要代谢物，并将其转化为临床实践。代谢物已经被用于疾病诊断，包括用于糖尿病诊断的葡萄糖。代谢组学将被应用于一系列疾病的研究，包括癌症(肺癌、血液结直肠癌)、心血管疾病、激素驱动的疾病以及妇女的健康/妊娠障碍。重要的是，在疾病的发展和对不同治疗方法的反应方面，并不是所有人都是一样的。传统医学对每个人都一视同仁。精准医学的新时代即将到来，这是一种考虑到人们基因、环境和生活方式的差异来量身定做疾病预防和治疗的创新方法。精准医疗的目标是在正确的时间针对正确的患者进行正确的治疗。所进行的研究将有助于开发新的精确医学工具，用于早期疾病诊断或开发不同的治疗方法。

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.