NMR Spectroscopy-Based Metabolic Profiling for Detecting Hepatobiliary Diseases

摘要

The emerging area of metabolomics deals with the detection of a large number of small molecules (metabolites) from human biofluids or tissue in a single step and promises immense utility for early diagnosis, therapy monitoring and understanding pathogenesis of many diseases. Metabolomics methods are focused on the information rich analytical techniques of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry (MS). While MS is highly sensitive, NMR spectroscopy provides more reproducible and quantifiable data. Focused on the development of simple NMR based tools for metabolomics applications, new NMR methodologies have been explored. The methods were applied to detect hepatobiliary disease biomarkers using human bile, which is closely associated with the pathological source. Causes or consequences of numerous diseases including hepatocellular carcinoma, cholangiocarcinoma and gallbladder cancer have been attributed to the altered human bile metabolic profile.