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Metabolomics of disease

Guest editor: Dr Timothy Veenstra

Rapid advances have been made in the prediction, detection, understanding and monitoring of human disease using metabolomic technologies. Genome Medicine presents a special issue devoted to metabolomics of disease, with specially commissioned comment and review articles, plus original research, to provide a state-of-the-art overview of this fast moving area and its clinical applications.

Learn more about the applications of metabolomics with our interactive graphic.

This collection of articles has not been sponsored and articles have undergone the journal’s standard peer-review process. The guest editor declares no competing interests.

  1. Presently, colorectal cancer (CRC) is staged preoperatively by radiographic tests, and postoperatively by pathological evaluation of available surgical specimens. However, present staging methods do not accura...

    Authors: Farshad Farshidfar, Aalim M Weljie, Karen Kopciuk, W Don Buie, Anthony MacLean, Elijah Dixon, Francis R Sutherland, Andrea Molckovsky, Hans J Vogel and Oliver F Bathe
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2012 4:42
  2. The number of metabolites identified in human cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has steadily increased over the past 5 years, and in this issue of Genome Medicine David Wishart and colleagues provide a comprehensive upda...

    Authors: Emanuel Schwarz, E Fuller Torrey, Paul C Guest and Sabine Bahn
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2012 4:39
  3. Human cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) is known to be a rich source of small molecule biomarkers for neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. In 2007, we conducted a comprehensive metabolomic study and performe...

    Authors: Rupasri Mandal, An Chi Guo, Kruti K Chaudhary, Philip Liu, Faizath S Yallou, Edison Dong, Farid Aziat and David S Wishart
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2012 4:38
  4. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide, and the development of new technologies for better understanding of the molecular changes involved in breast cancer progression is essential. Metabol...

    Authors: Carsten Denkert, Elmar Bucher, Mika Hilvo, Reza Salek, Matej Orešič, Julian Griffin, Scarlet Brockmöller, Frederick Klauschen, Sibylle Loibl, Dinesh Kumar Barupal, Jan Budczies, Kristiina Iljin, Valentina Nekljudova and Oliver Fiehn
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2012 4:37
  5. The prevalence, and associated healthcare burden, of diabetes mellitus is increasing worldwide. Mortality and morbidity are associated with diabetic complications in multiple organs and tissues, including the ...

    Authors: Marta Ugarte, Marie Brown, Katherine A Hollywood, Garth J Cooper, Paul N Bishop and Warwick B Dunn
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2012 4:35
  6. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) analyze the genetic component of a phenotype or the etiology of a disease. Despite the success of many GWAS, little progress has been made in uncovering the underlying me...

    Authors: Jerzy Adamski
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2012 4:34
  7. Metabolomics, the non-targeted interrogation of small molecules in a biological sample, is an ideal technology for identifying diagnostic biomarkers. Current tissue extraction protocols involve sample destruct...

    Authors: Meredith V Brown, Jonathan E McDunn, Philip R Gunst, Elizabeth M Smith, Michael V Milburn, Dean A Troyer and Kay A Lawton
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2012 4:33
  8. The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) are a set of three nuclear hormone receptors that together play a key role in regulating metabolism, particularly the switch between the fed and fasted s...

    Authors: Zsuzsanna Ament, Mojgan Masoodi and Julian L Griffin
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2012 4:32
  9. Increasingly sophisticated measurement technologies have allowed the fields of metabolomics and genomics to identify, in parallel, risk factors of disease; predict drug metabolism; and study metabolic and gene...

    Authors: Steven L Robinette, Elaine Holmes, Jeremy K Nicholson and Marc E Dumas
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2012 4:30
  10. Cigarette smoking is well-known to associate with accelerated skin aging as well as cardiovascular disease and lung cancer, in large part due to oxidative stress. Because metabolites are downstream of genetic ...

    Authors: Robert C Spitale, Michelle Y Cheng, Kimberly A Chun, Emily S Gorell, Claudia A Munoz, Dale G Kern, Steve M Wood, Helen E Knaggs, Jacob Wulff, Kirk D Beebe and Anne Lynn S Chang
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2012 4:14
  11. Several theories have been proposed to conceptualize the pathological processes inherent to schizophrenia. The 'prostaglandin deficiency' hypothesis postulates that defective enzyme systems converting essentia...

    Authors: Matej Orešič, Tuulikki Seppänen-Laakso, Daqiang Sun, Jing Tang, Sebastian Therman, Rachael Viehman, Ulla Mustonen, Theo G van Erp, Tuulia Hyötyläinen, Paul Thompson, Arthur W Toga, Matti O Huttunen, Jaana Suvisaari, Jaakko Kaprio, Jouko Lönnqvist and Tyrone D Cannon
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2012 4:1