Introduction

Dr Rueyleng Loo, together with Professor Jeremy Everett and Professor Frank Pullen, have recently formed a Medway Metabonomics Research Group (MMRG). Metabonomics is concerned with the metabolic profiling of people, animals or other organisms in order understand the impact of genetic changes, environmental changes, clinical interventions or exercise. Pharmacometabonomics is a new branch of metabonomics that is concerned with the prediction of the effects of drugs on a person or animal, based on an analysis of their pre-dose metabolic profile. It is predicted to have much future importance for personalised medicine.

Purpose of the MMRG and Facilities

The main purpose of the MMRG is to develop and strengthen metabonomics and pharmacometabonomics capabilities in this region. The analytical facilities available to this group include 4 nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers (1 x 500MHz, 2 x 400MHz and 1 x 300 MHz) and 10 mass spectrometers (2 x LC-MS, 2 x LC-MSMS, 2 x GC-MS, 1 x LC-Qtof –MSMS, 2 x LC-ion mobility Qtof MSMS and 1 x MALDI). In addition, we use advanced computational and statistical methodologies to help analyse the metabonomics data.

Projects

Our current projects involve the utility of metabonomics in the study of Cardiovascular disease, Diabetes and Exercise, Nutrition and Obesity.

We welcome suggestions for new projects, collaborations and consultancy.

OmniHeart Metabonomics Study

This project focuses on metabolic phenotyping using high-resolution spectroscopy of urine samples from the OmniHeart study. The global aim of this project is to identify the impact of different dietary interventions on the urinary metabolic phenotypes and to investigate specific urinary biomarkers associated with blood pressure and other cardiovascular disease risk factors, using the metabolomics-wide-association approach.

This project is collaboration between Medway School of Pharmacy, Imperial College London and The Johns Hopkins University. Ruey Leng is the lead of this MRC-funded project. This project is supported by a post-doc, Xin Zou, and a part-time technician, Viktorija Kuziene.

Diabetes and Exercise Metabonomics and Pharmacometabonomics Study

This project focuses on the metabolic profiling of urine and plasma samples from diabetic patients. The aim of the project is to evaluate and predict the efficacy of various combined drug and exercise regimes on the clinical outcomes for these patients.

This project is led by Jeremy Everett in collaboration Professor Stefano Balducci and Professor Silvano Zanuso at the University of Rome, Italy.