Title:Metabolomics Analysis for Biomarker Discovery: Advances and Challenges
Volume: 20
Issue: 2
Author(s): M.S. Monteiro, M. Carvalho, M.L. Bastos and P. Guedes de Pinho
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Metabolomics, metabolome, metabolites, biomarkers, systems biology, metabolomic analysis, Mass Spectrometry, NMR, metabolic profiling, untargeted metabolomics, advantages, limitations, recent advances
Abstract: Over the last decades there has been a change in biomedical research with the search for single genes, transcripts, proteins, or
metabolites being substituted by the coverage of the entire genome, transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome with the “omics” approaches.
The emergence of metabolomics, defined as the comprehensive analysis of all metabolites in a system, is still recent compared
to other “omics” fields, but its particular features and the improvement of both analytical techniques and pattern recognition methods has
contributed greatly to its increasingly use. The feasibility of metabolomics for biomarker discovery is supported by the assumption that
metabolites are important players in biological systems and that diseases cause disruption of biochemical pathways, which are not new
concepts. In fact, metabolomics, meaning the parallel assessment of multiple metabolites, has been shown to have benefits in various
clinical areas. Compared to classical diagnostic approaches and conventional clinical biomarkers, metabolomics offers potential advantages
in sensitivity and specificity. Despite its potential, metabolomics still retains several intrinsic limitations which have a great impact
on its widespread implementation - these limitations in biological and experimental measurements. This review will provide an insight to
the characteristics, strengths, limitations, and recent advances in metabolomics, always keeping in mind its potential application in clinical/
health areas as a biomarker discovery tool.
