Activity Detail
Seminar
FROM SPECTROSCOPIC BASIC RESEARCH TO LARGE-SCALE POPULATION MULTIOMICS Personal reflections on a 35-year journey
Mika Ala-Korpela
Metabolomics as a concept has been around for some 30 years. The early days were full of hope & hype but not that much scientific rigour. Eventually, for some research teams, analytical and quantitative (and critical) approach won over the black-and-white spectroscopic mainstream of unreasonable studies and interpretations. My team was one of those and our focus was serum metabolomics – i.e., biologically, the systemic metabolism. The quantitative molecular approach – with metabolic understanding and proper epidemiological cohorts with thousands and tens of thousands of participants since the very beginning – led to a plethora of new epidemiological findings and revealing of multiple novel genetic pathways. The application phase has now been ongoing for some 15 years (with close to 1000 scientific publications & over 2M samples analysed). However, it is essential to note that another 15 years of basic research preceded the eventually successful automated quantitative method development. The related research papers span from early understanding of the molecular background of 1H NMR spectroscopy signals of human serum in 1994 (Journal of Lipid Research) to the first paper on the automated quantitative methodology to analyse serum samples by 1H NMR in 2009 (Analyst) and eventually a large genome-wine analysis study in 2024 with some 250,000 participants from over 30 independent cohorts and almost 250 metabolic measures per individual (Nature). This is the story I will be telling in the first part of my presentation, i.e., how we transformed NMR spectroscopic basic research (of systemic metabolism / serum samples) to large-scale population multiomics in 30 years. I believe this path would be something to think about also for non-spectroscopists.
The second part of my talk I will devote to the future and the metabolomics characteristics and opportunities with the 1H NMR spectroscopic analyses of human urine. I will try to convince the audience that urine is indeed much more than just waste and could be a source of molecular biomarkers for pathway-specific assessment of kidney function. I will also reveal what is the status of our automated NMR-based urinalysis and what are our plans for future research and how all this connects to the previous developments with serum metabolomics. In addition, I will tie all this to the key details of the local developments in this area and how the local data collection, together with ours, will be an extraordinary base to make a long-lasting contribution to epidemiology and genetics of urinary metabolites. Pee most welcome to come to listen.