代谢组学在临床研究中的应用及进展

The application of metabonomics to clinical research and the progress

代谢组学是"后基因组学"时期新兴的一门学科,也是系统生物学的重要组成部分。代谢组学通过全面、定量检测生物样本中多种类型小分子化合物,来了解在内在和外界因素作用下生物体内源性物质的变化及规律,特别适合于临床上研究机体因受到遗传、生长、生理、环境因素和异物、病源等刺激的影响而产生的变化。借助于代谢组学技术不仅能够描述疾病发生、发展以及治疗过程中机体代谢机能的状态和变化,为临床疾病的诊断、病理机制的探索、新治疗靶点的发现等提供新的途径和思路,还可以揭示外界干扰因素(药物/毒物、环境、饮食、生活方式等)对机体的影响,为药效评价和疾病病因的筛查提供基础数据。近年来,代谢组学在临床研究方面得到了广泛的应用,取得了巨大的进展并展现了鼓舞人心的应用前景。该文分别就代谢组学在描述疾病发展状态、研究疾病诊断方法、探索疾病发病原因和发病机理、药效学评价等几个方面的应用及进展进行回顾和综述。

Metabonomics,a newly emerging ＂omics＂ science in postgenomics era,is an important part of system biology.By means of non-targeting quantitative determination of various low-molecular-weight metabolites in bio-specimen,it enables a better understanding of the metabolic variation in organisms when subject to internal and external stimuli.As the result,it is particularly suitable for characterizing the metabonomic alternation associated with various factors,such as genetics,growth,physiology,environment and stimuli of xenobiotics and pathogeny.Not only can metabonomics describe the state and alteration of organism’s metabolic function during the development and treatment of diseases,providing a novel approach to diagnosing diseases,explor-ing into the pathologic mechanism,and even offering new therapeutic targets,but can also reveal metabonomic effect of outside factors such as drugs/toxins,environment,diets and lifestyles,and thus facilitates therapeutic evaluation of medicines and identifying etiology of diseases.In general,recently metabonomics has been widely employed in clinical research,achieves fruitful results and shows exciting perspective.This article reviews the progress of metabonomics applying to clinic research,including the description of disease state,development of diagnostic methods,exploration of etiology,pathogeny and pathology as well as assessment of pharmacodynamics.