Center for Metabolomic Studies Seminar Series: “Integrative Molecular Phenotyping: A Case of the Right Needle in the Right Haystack”

Speaker:
Craig Wheelock, PhD
Associate Professor
Unit of Integrative Metabolomics, Institute of Environmental Medicine
Karolinska Institutet
Stockholm, Sweden

Presentation: “Integrative Molecular Phenotyping: A Case of the Right Needle in the Right Haystack”

Abstract:

Asthma ranks among the most common chronic diseases of industrialized countries. However, with upwards of 20% of asthmatics presenting with difficult to control conditions that often respond poorly to current therapies, there is a significant unmet need to optimize individual patient treatment. Asthma is a general term used to refer to a broad spectrum of loosely defined conditions that lack clear molecular descriptions.

Metabolomics provides a real-time indicator of biological status, reflecting the integrated result of genetic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and environmental interactions, as well as treatment responses, making it ideally suited for performing molecular characterization of asthma phenotypes. Towards this end, we construct the necessary metabolomics and targeted assays to identify molecular signatures of asthma. In particular, we focus on the development of high-precision workflows designed to function in the new domain space of metabolomic epidemiology.

This presentation will provide an overview of the analytical methodologies developed specifically for our molecular phenotyping efforts as well as present the results of recent efforts to identify molecular descriptors of sub-phenotypes of severe airway disease. These findings include data from recent interventional trials demonstrating the utility of a stratified medicine approach to treating asthma. The workflow presented will demonstrate our approach to the development of a high-throughput molecular phenotyping towards applications in personalized respiratory medicine.