Why is Metabolomics One of the Hottest Research Topics?
Metabolomics is an emerging omics following genomics, proteomics, and transcriptomics. Since 1999, the number of articles published in metabolomics research has increased gradually. Metabolomics has extremely broad and important applications in the safety evaluation of new drugs, toxicology, physiology, early diagnosis of major diseases, personalized treatment, functional genomics, modernization of Chinese medicine, environmental assessment, nutrition and other scientific fields. It is no doubt a vibrant subject.
Metabolomics — A Rising Star with Great Potential

Metabolome refers to the sum of all low molecular weight metabolites of a cell during a specific physiological period, and is an integral part of a comprehensive understanding of a biological system. If genomics and proteomics tell us about possible events, then metabolomics can tell us what actually happened. So far, it is hard to tell how many metabolites are there in the human body, but various substrates including fat, sugar, and amino acids, as well as small molecule compounds produced during metabolism can provide important information for understanding the health condition of the body.
Since its inception, metabolomics research has been rapidly and widely applied to fields such as drug development, molecular physiology and pathology, and environmental health. Compared to other omics, metabolomics can not only give a large database, but also provide functional information. For example, high cholesterol is known to be associated with cardiovascular disease risk, but high cholesterol levels can only suggest that there may be certain health problems in the body, while metabolomics study can analyze the total of metabolites in a given period for overall and dynamic analysis. Therefore, it can clearly give the reason for the increase in cholesterol.
Metabolomics research is simple, fast and cost-saving. Furthermore, metabolites exist in any body fluid such as tissues, cells, blood, urine, saliva, etc, and it is also easy to get functional information. Therefore, It is is the most practical method for the detection of clinical specimens. The 15th International Conference and Exhibition on Metabolomics & Systems Biology is going to be held during April 29–30,2019, Kyoto Japan. It will be an investigation of New Research Innovation of Metabolomics and will spread the most recent advancements and patterns in metabolomics displaying, proteomics, systems biology, genomics, precision medicine, lipidomics, LC-MS and GC-MS techniques, bioinformatics, plant metabolomics, clinical metabolomics, tumor and digestion system, computational science, metabolomics disorder, nutritional metabolomics, therapeutic metabolomics and more.

Segmentation of Metabolomics Research Areas to Promote the Progress of Translational Medicine
Based on metabolomics technology, more precise subdivisions such as tumor metabolomics, microbial metabolomics, urine metabolomics, and lipid metabolomics have emerged.
In 2009, researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical School of the University of Michigan found prostate cancer biomarker-sarcosine based on the GC-MS metabolomics research platform. They found that it may play an important role in cancer metastasis (Nature). In 2011, scientists used the LC-MS metabolomics research platform and found biomarkers for cardiovascular disease, which are some phospholipid metabolites such as choline, trimethylamine oxide, and betaine (Nature). In 2014, the Chinese research team used the GC-MS metabolomics research platform and found a diagnostic biomarker for acute myeloid leukemia, and further explored another set of metabolic mechanisms of tumor cells to reveal possible therapeutic targets (Blood). In the same year, the US research team used the LC-MS metabolomics research platform and found four biomarkers to distinguish different stages of development of lung cancer, and conducted more than 1,000 cases of population validation (Cancer Research). In 2016, China’s first large-scale metabolomics study used the LC-MS metabolomics research platform to screen out 12 highly sensitive and specific biomarkers, which can be used for rapid diagnosis of clinical coronary heart disease and differential diagnosis of different classifications. (Journal of the American College of Cardiology). In 2017, a metabolic dynamic image called Metabolomics has been used to identify new blood metabolite biomarkers that distinguish between pancreatic cancer and chronic pancreatitis. Compared with traditional diagnostic methods, it is of higher sensitivity and can be applied to the earlier stages of diseases.
As metabolomics technology itself can provide a lot of functional information and convenient detection, it has its inherent advantages in the field of translational medicine research, and can be combined with clinical medical research better and faster.
At the same time, we should also realize that there are certain limitations in using metabolites as markers. For example, in many metabolic processes, the dynamic range of metabolites has a large individual difference, and is susceptible to diet, sleep, environment, age, smoking. Due to many factors, it is difficult to detect metabolomic biomarkers in such a noise background. Superficially, metabolomics is developing rapidly, but still lag far behind genomics and proteomics.
