Metabolomics platform to accelerate the identification of novel drivers of disease

Many of the interactions between microbes and human cells are mediated by soluble molecules. Metabolomics, the analytical measurement of such molecules, is thus key to better understand the functional interactions of the human-microbial symbiosis. However, there is currently a limitation of how many samples can be run through such analysis because there is a lack of sufficient capabilities, both in terms of hardware and personnel. In addition, there is a lack of standardisation across the globaly available platforms, making it difficult to compare findings across different patient cohorts.

Prof. Segal’s lab will contribute towards both making relevant multi-omic data sets of large human cohorts available as well as to support other reseachers in analysing their samples in a standardised fashion. For example, carrying out metabolomic measurements of participants in the human phenotype project (Project 10k), a large-scale cohort aimed at identifying novel drivers of disease, has the potential to identify novel metabolites predicting and/or driving disease. The metabolomic measurements will be compared with all the other deep phenotyping data obtained throughout the project in order to find mechanistic links to disease.