Titre : Chemical Separations for Metabolomics: New Advances in Biomarker Discovery for Population Health.
Endroit : Pavillon J-A.-Bombardier, salle 1035 à 11 h.
Hôte : Professeur Karen Waldron.
Cette conférence sera prononcée (en anglais) par le professeur Philip Britz-McKibbin du Département de chimie et de biologie chimique au sein de de la McMaster University.
Résumé : The future of medicine requires innovations in evidence-based interventions that promote disease prevention and healthy living on a population level. Comprehensive metabolite profiling (i.e., metabolomics) offers a holistic approach for understanding the phenotype of an organism at a molecular level that is closely associated with clinical outcomes. However, the metabolome remains largely uncharacterized in complex biological samples notably when considering thousands of bioactive small molecules derived from the diet and lifelong environmental exposures. An introduction to capillary electrophoresis (CE) and CE-mass spectrometry (MS) technology will first be presented in the context of public health initiatives for human disease prevention. Recent strategies for enhancing sample throughput, data fidelity and unknown identification in metabolomics will also be discussed for biomarker discovery when using multiplexed separations in conjunction with signal pattern recognition and high accuracy tandem MS. Pre-analytical and post-analytical variables that contribute to false discoveries will be outlined when evaluating the metabolic phenotype or “metabotype” of an organism in volume-restricted/mass-limited biospecimens. Recent studies will include the discovery of putative markers for early detection of cystic fibrosis in newborn screening programs, food-specific markers for validation of dietary interventions that promote human health, as well as risk assessment of smoke-exposure in firefighters conducting training exercises in burn houses.
