Recent Developments in Clinical Omics

Abstract

recognized for their biological importance. Even though we are just at the beginning of fully understanding the interac-tion between these different “Omics” regimes, does it seem clear that in many cases genetic alterations in conjunction with environmental factors appear to integrate into pheno-typic “Omics” disturbances that mark molecularly defined disease (sub-)types [9]. Next to the biomarker like 8, character of molecular “Omics” patterns, particular atten-tion may be paid to the biological activity of, e.g., distinct metabolites or lipids. Prominent examples include metabo-lites of the prostaglandin-, neurotransmitter- or steroid-hormone families, being crucial to numerous physiological processes.The enormous progress achieved in clinical “Omics” in recent decades has mainly been driven by technological innovations. The rapid developments in the field of mass spectrometry play a key role in driving this progress. Other important factors are the separation sciences, such as liquid chromatography, gas chromatography and capillary electro-phoresis which similarly experienced significant progress in the last decades. Hyphenation of these key technologies in LC–MS, GC–MS and CE–MS constellations is the most common mode of application that has proven useful for the analysis of a very wide range of biomolecules. Together with improvements in databases and data processing as well as analysis methods, these innovations have enabled clinical “Omics” research.This topical collection is positioned at the exciting inter-face of technological progress and application of “Omics” technology for answering biological as well as clinical research questions. Aspects of clinical sample collection, sample preparation, separation, and advanced mass spec-trometric detection regimes are addressed, covering a wide range of analytes such as metabolites, bioactive lipids, gly-cans as well as proteins and peptides. Next to manuscripts In the 1940s, Roger Williams and his associates investi-gated the concept that every individual has a metabolic pat-tern reflected by its bodily fluids [1]. While Williams and his co-workers had to rely on paper chromatography, tech-nical achievements allowing the use of gas and liquid chro-matography boosted progress in the field, resulting in the first reports about the use of these chromatographic tech-niques for the investigation of metabolic profiles in relation to disease [1]. As early as 1966, the first report describing the use of gas chromatography in combination with mass spectrometry was published by Dalgliesh et al. [2], mark-ing the beginning of what is known today as mass spec-trometry-based metabolomics. However, it took more than 30 years before the term metabolome/metabolomics was coined [3]. Today metabolomics or the systematic study of organisms’ metabolites is integrated into the “Omics” cascade from genome, transcriptome, proteome to metabo-lome [4].Recently, regulatory and modulatory layers of the “Omics” cascade, such as the epigenome, phosphopro-teome, glycoproteome and glycome [5–7], are increasingly