InVitro Diagnostics Research (IVDr)

Metabolomics by Nuclear Magnetics Resonance (NMR)

Sample robot holding five cartridges with 96 samples each

The power of personalized genomic information has drawn mainstream media attention with services like Ancestry.com and 23andme.com. The field of personalized medicine has adapted the exploitation of the human genome but is quickly expanding to include other perspectives such as the proteome and metabolome. There is rapidly expanding knowledge associated with the health effects that are related to changes to the metabolome.

We are excited to be one of the first Universities in the US to provide this tool to researchers and clinicians at Vanderbilt University and the medical research community. Being able to get a metabolic profile of body fluids without any extensive sample preparation within hours will not only help to detect signs of a disease early but also serve as an efficient and powerful tool to discover new indicators for health related issues.

Main advantages of the NMR based method are:

quantitative metabolite description
reproducible results
simple and fast sample preparation
fully automated measurement and data analysis in minutes
non-destructive
data can be re-analyzed any time as new metabolites are added to the database

96 sample Cartridge of 5mm NMR tubes containing samples

Examples of this powerful diagnostic tool have been described in the literature, especially in the areas of early detection of newborn diseases, diabetes, and cancer to name just a few.

For more information, please contact:

Markus Voehler, Ph.D. m.voehler@vanderbilt.edu office: (615) 322 1573

Don Stec, Ph.D. donald.f.stec@Vanderbilt.Edu office: (615) 322 6704