Supporting the industry sector of the metabolomics community: the remit of the Metabolomics Society’s Industry Engagement Task Group

Abstract

The overarching goal of the Metabolomics Society’s Industry Engagement Task Group is to enhance the relationships between the Metabolomics Society, the scientific community that it supports, and different companies including software and hardware vendors, service providers and users of metabolomics technologies within industry. The second goal is to improve the benefits provided by the Metabolomics Society to support the growth of metabolomics within industry, both as a tool for scientific discovery and as a commercial product. The third goal is to encourage industrial contributions toward the growth of the international metabolomics community. Synergistic relationships between industry, academia and government scientists are critical to facilitate the continued growth of metabolomics. A report published in 2013 on the worldwide metabolomics market for clinical disease biomarker research and applications predicts double-digit growth up to 2017 (http://www.businesswire.com/ news/home/20131101005334/en/Research-Markets-2013Report-Worldwide-Metabolomics-Market). Various industries will be needed to deliver such growth, spanning industrial technology providers and industrial technology users. These needs have been recognised by the Industry Engagement Task Group, which is developing a portfolio of benefits to support both groups. The first industrial sector comprises instrument and software vendors, chemical companies (who market chemical standards, reagents and ‘kits’), and metabolomics service providers. Generalising their needs somewhat, these companies have products or services to sell. Therefore, one of the most important aspects for them is the ability to reach the Society’s membership for marketing, and hence we seek to engage with scientists and/or business development managers in these companies and help to deliver a portfolio of networking and advertising opportunities. In addition, these companies have a keen interest in developing their latest breakthroughs in metabolomics technologies into commercial products or services. Marketing advanced metabolomics technologies to the broader science community is critical to the continued growth of the discipline, and improved collaboration between the industrial and academic/government sectors is vital to continue the rapid advancement and distribution of metabolomics technologies. The second industrial sector is composed of users of metabolomics technologies within a broad range of industries, e.g. pharmaceutical, agri-chemical, food and biotechnology. Metabolomics as a science is now sufficiently mature to have significant impacts on the wider society if the implementation of metabolomics technologies in the industrial sector is appropriately supported. We M. R. Viant (&) School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK e-mail: m.viant@bham.ac.uk