About Us

The metabolomics infrastructure presents a whole setup of advanced and complementary technologies for mass-spectrometry and other services, providing high data quality and versatile packages for metabolic profiling to suit your needs.

Mass-spectrometry is a well-established technology for studying metabolic changes by detecting the metabolites related to the physio-pathological state of the cell, tissue, or organism within the context of the environmental condition, genetic regulation, altered kinetic activity of enzymes, and changes in metabolic reactions.

Metabolomics profiling identifies thousands of metabolites generated by the enzymatic reactions of specific pathways, providing a snapshot of cell activity such as cell signaling, energy transfer, and cell-to-cell communication. Alternative metabolic pathways due to environmental adaptation or acquired drug resistance may be identified using labeled substrates (stable isotope tracers).

Applications

Our metabolomics and preclinical imaging services apply to a variety of samples and research studies. Depending on what you are looking for, we can suggest the best approach to find answers to your research questions.

Metabolomics mass spectrometry analyses apply to a variety of research studies and samples. Explore the possibilities and contact us to discuss your design ideas.

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Animal

The interdependence between humans, animals and the environment are of particular importance today, with the dramatic emergence and spread of zoonotic diseases, food, water and soil contamination, and the degradation of resources and habitats. All these events have led to an increase of risk factors for functional diseases, burdening global health. Metabolomics represents a technical solution for a holistic, collaborative, and precise approach for the advancement of the One Health strategy.

Nutrition

Understanding the paths of basic nutrients is of importance from both translational and clinical perspectives. Metabolites are key biological communication channels and represent a functional readout at the interface of different major influential factors that define health and disease. Metabolomics is the technology that enables holistic and systematic analyses of metabolites in a biological system. Hence, given its intrinsic functionality, its tight connection to metabolism and its high clinical actionability potential, metabolomics is a very appealing technology for nutrition science. The ultimate goal is to deliver a tailored and clinically relevant nutritional recommendations and interventions to achieve precision nutrition. Metabolomics applications can be used to identify bioactive molecules and personalize nutrition remodeling clinical nutrition practices in this Precision Medicine era.

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Cells

Cell metabolomics is an emerging field that addresses fundamental biological questions and allows one to observe metabolic phenomena in cells. Cell metabolomics consists of four sequential steps: (a) sample preparation and extraction, (b) metabolic profiles of low-weight metabolites based on MS techniques, (c) pattern recognition approaches and bioinformatics data analysis, (d) metabolites identification resulting in putative biomarkers and molecular targets. The biomarkers are eventually placed in metabolic networks to provide insight on the cellular biochemical phenomena.

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Clinical

Clinical metabolomics is able to illustrate an instantaneous snapshot of an individual by revealing the compound variety and concentrations of the metabolome. The unique metabolomic fingerprints and the underlying perturbations of metabolic pathways at the pathophysiological state offers a comprehensive avenue to inquire potential indicators, the metabolic phenotype of various diseases, and ultimately help address precision medicine.
Metabolomics can be applied to improve human health, as well as its trends and impacts in metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, longevity, the exposome, liquid biopsy development, and pharmaco-metabolomics. The identification of distinct metabolomic profiles will help in the discovery and improvement of clinical strategies to treat human disease.
In the tumor research, metabolomics can be employed to identify biomarkers for prediction, diagnosis, and prognosis. Chemotherapeutic effect evaluation and personalized medicine decision-making can also benefit from metabolomic analysis of patient biofluid or biopsy samples.

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Fermentation

Metabolomics mass spectrometry analysis can be used to study fermented samples to understand how different conditions alter the metabolism of the bacteria and yeast, crucial information about nutrient compounds, and product accumulation.

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Microbiome

The human microbiome plays an important role in our health and its composition and functionality is influenced by a variety of factors such as nutrition, environmental and pharmaceutical exposures, stress, and lifestyle. Metabolomics can be applied to elucidate the link between the human microbiome and the metabolism of various cell types.

Facility

UHPLC/ Q-TOF MS
The High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) of the 1290 Infinity series and the combined Q-TOF 6550 mass spectrometer permit a metabolite detection sensitivity of a few femtograms. The system allows untargeted and stable isotope labeling metabolomic analyses for a wide spectrum of samples and metabolites. 
GC/MS
Intuvo 9000 gas chromatography system paired with MSD Inert Plus 5977B mass spectrometer. The system allows small molecules quantification through the Single Ion Monitoring method as well as labeling analyses using stable isotopes. 
Ion Mobility UHPLC/Q-TOF MS
The HPLC system is coupled to the 6560 Ion Mobility (IM) Q-TOF LC/MS mass spectrometer, which includes a new dimension of separation of molecular species in the ion mobility phase. Ion mobility mass spectrometry allows you to create a more complete profile of metabolomic samples, providing access to new information that is difficult to gain from other MS systems, such as isomers identification or chiral molecules. 
GC/Q-TOF MS
The 7890B Gas Chromatography System combined with the 7250 Q-TOF spectrometer enables robust untargeted metabolomic and structural analyses of small polar and nonpolar molecules. 
LC/QqQ MS
The 6495D triple quadrupole LC/MS system allows the quantitative analysis of known compounds thanks to Multiple Reaction Monitoring technology. The system is used for targeted analyzes with high sensitivity and specificity. 
SeaHorse XF24 Analyzer 
The Seahorse XF24 is a cellular bioenergetics analyzer that measures cell lines' oxygen consumption rate (OCR) and the extracellular acidification rate (ECAR). 
YSI 2950 Biochemistry Analyzer 
Fluid analyzer with biosensor technology that uses enzymes' intrinsic specificity to rapidly measure the following substances simultaneously: Glucose, Lactate, Glutamine, and Glutamate. 
TapeStation 4150 
The TapeStation 4150 system is an automated electrophoresis platform for quality control of nucleic acid samples. It allows DNA and RNA sample analysis. 
SureScan Microarray Scanner 
The SureScan Microarray instrument allows the measurement of fluorescence intensity of one or two dyes bound to a sample of labeled DNA or RNA bound to the microarray for genomic and transcriptomic analyses. 

Services

Our metabolomics infrastructure offers untargeted, targeted, and targeted labeling (with tracer molecules) analysis using gas chromatography (GC) or liquid chromatography (LC) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS) detectors.