Where was Metabolomics all this while?

October 21, 2014 (MMD Newswire) — While the world keeps fascinated with Genomics, it’s the sub-set Metabolomics that seems to be taking the lead. For a long time the best written science articles have been about the possibilities of improving quality of life through advancements in Genomics. Most of us have heard at least one story of a remarkable breakthrough in Genomics, but it still remains hard for the common people willing to maintain good health gain a perspective on whether Genomics offers the root-cause (and solution) to general health conditions like obesity, constant fatigue, psychiatric problems (anxiety, delusions, hallucinations), kidney stones, or a learning disability impending to manifest in the normal-looking newborn.

Genomics no doubt is writing new rules of health care and seemingly is “soon” likely to decode diseases at very early and manageable stage. But this “soon” began fifteen years back when the first gene was sequenced in course of the Human Genome Project (HGP) and a benchmark established. It continues to this date when scientists are identifying the difference in the gene sequence of people with a cancer, diabetes or tumor against the benchmark which the HGP established.

Genomics has helped introduce lot many tests which give, say, 42% risk of breast cancer against the population risk of 38%. But, health is much more than a game of probability. Else a coin could be world’s most sophisticated laboratory, giving a 50% probability of not having cancer when tossed.

In contrast, there is Metabolomics which gives quite a bit of deterministic information about the disorders and health conditions related to metabolism at a very early and manageable stage.

Metabolism in simple words is “everything that the human body does”; and Metabolomics is the scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites, which are the intermediates and products of metabolism. Study of metabolites gives early information of faulty metabolism which may progressively manifest in form of bad health conditions like – obesity, hypertension, valvular heart disease, learning disabilities, food intolerance and many more.

So, where was Metabolomics all this while?

Like Alvin Toffler quoted once, “The next big revolution will happen when genetics and computers come together”. The same remained true to metabolomics.

A convergence of expertise from diverse areas like Biochemistry, Medicine, Data Mining, Statistics and Software eventually formed laboratory processes and algorithms which can now analyze the complex biochemical changes in the human body reflective in the urine (or blood) sample and gain an early stage indication of the disorders impending to manifest.

Long before Metabolomics was even known as a discreet subject, the ancient Chinese doctors who knew Metabolomics used ants for the evaluation of urine of patients to detect whether the urine contained high levels of glucose, and hence detect diabetes. The evolution continued in the Middle Ages when “urine charts” were used to link the colors, tastes and smells of urine to various medical conditions because of a problem with metabolism.

In the modern century the Chromatographic Techniques developed in the 1950s and 1960s and it became feasible to quantitatively (not qualitatively) measure the metabolic profiles in urine. Instruments like Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MSMS), Gas chromatography-Mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and HPLCs could be used to measure compounds present in urine and tissue extracts to the tune of even Nanograms and Pikograms.

The chromatogram which looks like a compressed collection of peaks and troughs is a representation of presence-absence and intensity of a metabolic marker in urine. The chromatograms in the 1950s were widespread to enable an expert to analyze the peaks “manually”. In the 1980s, the instruments became faster, but the problem yet remained about handling the information of hundreds of metabolic markers, their combinations and mathematical values. With advancements in computing science through the 1990s and in the 2000s, a quick and quantitative analysis of metabolism became possible.

Today the processing time of the urine (or blood) samples through a GC-MS or other chromatography instruments is very short and result in highly compressed chromatograms representing immense of data on metabolites. But the sophisticated algorithms analyze the complex data and work the risk associated with multiple combinations of those found in abnormal quantities.

And this is where Alvin Toffler’s quote realized for Metabolomics. A revolution is in the making now.

The applications are immense. One such area of application is Metabolic Screening of Newborn. The medico-economic principle guiding the governments who sponsor Mass Metabolic Screening of Newborn says that – Screening a disorder should cost less than the overall cost of management of the manifested disorder in the fraction of population which would get affected for not being screened. The new developments in Metabolomics has made it possible to now analyze over One Hundred Metabolic Disorders in a single test, at a fraction of the conventional costs.

Like way, Metabolomics offers a lot to counter the ill-effects on health due to a weight loss program. Chronic dieting leads to loss of weight, but does more bad than good for it also fluctuates the levels of important metabolic markers in the body which are necessary for a good health. A comprehensive and regular metabolic profiling helps track the metabolic markers and keep them in appropriate levels by adjusting the diets and lifestyles during the weight loss program.

The application of Metabolomics in the area of Autism, Dysbiosys, Diabetes is also immense.

Till recently, for lack of economic viability of complex and comprehensive metabolic analysis, the tests remained out of focus of diagnostic laboratories. Another challenge was to converge the diverse (and expensive) academic expertise required for metabolomics. India has made a mark as a knowledge economy today and has some natural advantages to it when it comes to metabolomics. The economic and high quality human resource, the high genetic diversity of local population and access to software infrastructure and skills have helped shape globally scalable business models in Metabolomics.

Organizations like PreventiNe (India) have built a sizeable operations which span across South Asia, Europe and LATAM wherein the metabolic tests are conducted and analytics done based on the technology developed by the company. An inherent advantage of having its development center in India is that it has built up a database and an experience of thousands of so-called rare metabolic disorders and can de-code several metabolic syndromes which have been puzzling experts worldwide.

CEO Abhimanyu Kumar says, “Demand for this technology is high, and we are having a lot of success in developing partnerships with various commercial and research institutions. While Genomics still evolves and may take time coming closer to solving day-to-day health problems, Metabolomics has already gone ahead solving several problems which were considered to be difficult till now.”

Name: Paramita Mazumdar

Email: info@preventine.com

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