Page 23 - CIBERDEM-2015-eng

Metabolomics Platform
http://www.metabolomicsplatform.com/
The Metabolomics Platform is a mixed CIBERDEM - Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) platform for giving technological services. The main aim of the Metab- olomics Platform is to work as an integrated labo- ratory for CIBERDEM groups, defining objectives, dimensions and characteristics of both the set of samples and of experimental designs. The experi- mental data is processed by our staff team, facilitat- ing the interpretation of results and providing solid, relevant clinical conclusions useful for the different research groups.
The equipment currently available in the NMR and LC/GC-MS field enables large-scale analysis of body fluids (serum or urine, for example) as well as tis- sues from biopsies of patients and/or animal mod- els.
The use of advanced statistics, chemometrics and multivariate algorithms allows to transform a large set of data into metabolic profiles, and ultimate- ly into clinical information. Our aim is to introduce metabolomics as a complementary research tool for both clinical diagnoses and to elucidate the un- known mechanisms associated with a specific dis- ease.
The Metabolomics Platform specifically addresses the needs of the Research Groups of the CIBER- DEM and the URV; its services, as well as potential scientific cooperation schemes, are nevertheless available for other CIBER groups.
In 2015 ten cooperation activities were carried out with CIBERDEM groups and four with groups from other CIBERs.
The platform’s scientific work in 2015 can be summed up as:
• Publications in indexed journals: 13
• Average impact factor: 4,23
• Posters at international conferences: 9
• Projects started in 2015: 2 national projects (BFU2014-57466-P and EUIN2015-62503) and 2
European projects (EU660034-MSCA-IF-ES-FT and 645758-TROPSENSE)
• Agreements and contracts with companies: 1 (BIOS- FER TESLAB SL.)
Lines of research active during 2015
• Characterisation of lipoproteins by NMR for stud- ying dyslipidaemias.
• Serum profiling procedure for studying resistance to insulin and diabetes in population studies.
• Development and study of statistical, chemom- etric multivariate and artificial intelligence algo- rithms enabling the analysis of large sets of data.
• Non-radioactive isotopomers for studying met- abolic profiles and their flow in culture cells and animal models.
• Study of diabetic retinopathy.
• Study of molecular images of tissues and body fluid profiling by means of nanostructured surfac- es.
• Metabolomics study on exposure to “thirdhand smoke” (THS).
Platforms
CIBERDEM I Annual report 2015 I 23