Versatility and Clinical Applications of Metabolomics: Tissues and Biofluids Investigation for Pathological Clustering

Metabolomics is the discipline that comprehensively and simultaneously profile the metabolome within a sample or organism. Investigating the downstream processes from gene expression and protein synthesis to the metabolic network, metabolomics may be of pivotal importance for the design of new screening methodology, for the identification of novel biomarkers and for the study of diseases at molecular and biochemical level. To this end, the versatility of metabolomic strategy was exploited for the investigation of diverse clinical conditions and different phenotypes regarding pregnancy, neonatology, oncology, odontology, treatment response, and autoimmune diseases. In particular, GC-MS, 1H-NMR or HRMAS-MRS were applied on AF, intact kidney tissue, extracts from placenta, plasma, saliva, and urine specimens. In most studies, metabolomic strategy was able to highlight significant alteration related to various mechanisms (e.g. dietary intake and oxidative stress) that affected the relative concentrations of the metabolome. In conclusions, while larger, multicentre samples size and parallel microbiological analyses should be used to confirm data, these metabolomics-based findings are an interesting promise for the future discovery of novel biomarkers, phenotypical investigations, and translation into medical setting to improve clinical practice.