[AVX Seminar] Human and In Vitro NMR Metabolomics Impacting On Health Research

Title: Human and In Vitro NMR Metabolomics Impacting On Health Research

Speaker: Ana Gil

Affiliation: Universidade de Aveiro

Department of Chemistry and CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials, University of Aveiro, Portugal

E-mail: agil@ua.pt

This presentation is composed of two parts, one regarding the more common use of metabolomics to search for disease biomarkers in biofluids (and, to a lesser extent, in tissues), and a second part relating to selected in vitro applications that may, in time, also impact positively on human health.

Increasingly, biofluid metabolomics has been developing towards non-invasive biological samples, such as blood, urine and saliva, sometimes aided by in tandem tissue metabolomics. Urine is particularly interesting due to its non-invasive and easy collection, exquisite complexity and sensitivity to the general health status of the human organism. However, some of these features also lead to significant challenges related to the contribution of individual and population phenotypes (e.g. effects of diet, lifestyle, culture) to the sought disease signature or biomarker. In this talk, urine metabolomic studies focusing premature birth and pregnancy, and age-related diseases will be presented, while considering the effects of phenotype variability, either within single cohorts, or between distinct national or transnational cohorts.

Following a bottom-up approach, in vitro metabolomic strategies may provide valuable levels of biological information, which may eventually translate into tissue or biofluid biomarkers of potential clinical use. This will be illustrated by metabolomic studies in three different contexts: anti-cancer drugs (e.g. to gauge drug performance or biotoxicity), silver nanoparticles as an ubiquitous contaminant, and stem cell differentiation for improved tissue regeneration strategies.