The CMM Medical Metabolomics Facility (MMF) offers both untargeted and (semi-)targeted metabolomics, lipidomics and fluxomics. Lipidomics analyses that are performed include the analysis of lipid classes such as phospholipids, acylglycerides, sphingolipids, (oxy-)sterols and sterol-esters, fatty acids, steroids, and eicosanoids. Metabolomics analysis comprise intermediate metabolites of glycolysis, citric acid cycle, pentose-phosphate pathway, acylcarnitines, nucleotides, amino acids, and many more.
If you are interested and want to know whether the MMF can help you in your research, please do not hesitate to contact Edwin Stigter.
Untargeted metabolomics and lipidomics approaches consist of discovery-oriented mass spectrometry analysis thereby focussing on low molecular weight molecules present in a variety of matrices and biological samples (blood plasma, cells, organoids, faeces, insects, etc.). These approaches provide the ability to perform relative quantification to determine which chemicals – both known and unknown – are changing between samples or culture conditions. Typical applications include basic biological research, biomarker discovery, clinical research and other.
Targeted metabolomics is a hypothesis-oriented analysis and is typically used for the absolute quantification of known metabolites present in a sample. Methods for the quantification of several (classes of) metabolites were developed over the years.
The MMF offers its expertise for small projects (a set of samples) and full projects (up to multi-year collaborative research). The services we provide include consultation in experimental design, sample processing and preparation, data acquisition, and reporting of results. Additional further data analysis is also possible on request.
Our instrumentation consists of equipment for sample preparation and analytical instruments. The latter consists of several types of ultra-high performance liquid chromatographs (UHPLC) and mass spectrometers allowing for a variety of measurement capabilities. For untargeted metabolomics UHPLC coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) is the technique of choice. Targeted metabolomics analysis is typically performed on an UHPLC coupled to a tandem-MS (TQD) instrument.
Metabolomics information is relevant to biological research as it serves to bridge the gap between the observed phenotype and the other so-called “omes”.
The level of metabolites in a cell or tissue is a complex function of many different regulatory processes inside the cell. It represents integrative information of cellular function, and hence defines the phenotype of a cell or tissue in response to genetic or environmental changes.
The 'omics' cascade
To identify / quantify the metabolome, i.e. the (‘complete’ set of) small molecule metabolites found in a biological sample, we use LC-MS (MS) instruments. Depending on the question, an analysis strategy is proposed. Different sample preparation methods and platforms, as well as different MS-instrument types are used.
