Advances in lipidomics and metabolomics for insight into disease
mechanisms
Timothy J. Garrett, PhD.
University of Florida
Department of Pathology, Immunology, and Laboratory Medicine
Abstract
Metabolomics refers to the comprehensive measurement of small molecules in biofluids by either mass spectrometry (MS) or nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) with the aim of covering multiple KEGG pathways, exposome products, and chemical reactions to provide new insights into disease etiologies. Lipidomics is a subset of metabolomics focused specifically on the analysis of lipid species. MS based metabolomics and lipidomics generally require the use of liquid chromatography to separate metabolites based on polarity and high-resolution MS to accurately
measure the mass-to-charge (m/z). The combination of retention time and m/z accuracy provides a reliable method to identify metabolites, which is critical for making disease marker discoveries.
These ‘Omics also represent the merging of many disciplines. It covers knowledge of metabolism, analytical measurement, and statistical analysis as well as integrated pathway mapping in order to unravel cellular complexities. Our work in disease diagnostics centers on the merging of analytical capabilities with informatics to improve our ability to identify illness either earlier or with
better precision. This talk will discuss analytical advances such as IE-Omics in the context of several disorders including urinary cancers (prostate, kidney, bladder), meningioma as well as rare disease diagnostics.
Dr. Timothy Garrett. Biography:
After graduating in 2006, Tim Garrett accepted a Research Assistant Professorship at the University of Florida in the Department of Medicine where he began research on targeted quantitation for clinical research and diagnostics using mass spectrometry. In 2014, he transitioned to an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, Immunology, and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Florida continuing his work to translate mass spectrometry to clinical areas. As a clinical member of Pathology, he worked on the development of several new clinical assays utilizing mass spectrometry that are currently used in clinical toxicology. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology, where he is also the Director of high throughput metabolomics, for the Southeast Center for Integrated Metabolomics and conducts research in the application of metabolomics to disease diagnosis and clinical diagnostics.
(About Dr. Garrett:
https://garrettlab.pathology.ufl.edu/dr-garrett/
