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Netherlands Metabolomics Centre

The Netherlands Metabolomics Centre focuses on the development of metabolomics-based technologies and instrumentation to address the current and future challenges in biology, biotechnology and biomedical research in order to improve personalised health and quality of life.

Quantitative profiling

The aim of Quantitative Profiling is to develop a generation of metabolomics platforms inspired by biology and driven by technological opportunities. Platforms for phosphopeptide, oxy-lipid and isoprostane analysis have been developed and validated and are being applied to urgent biological questions related to chronic inflammatory disorders, regulation of life span and oxidative stress.

Metabolite identification

Because of a bottleneck in metabolite identification, the large number of metabolites in body fluid still remains unknown, the development of innovative identification methods is mandatory. This hampers biomarker research for the innovative food and pharmaceutical industries. Metabolite identification projects have been designed to improve the current state of metabolite identification strategies.

Biostatistics

The aim of the projects within the Bio Statistics theme of the NMC is to develop statistical tools that will serve in creating information from metabolomics data. The products of the projects within the BS theme will be validated methods or algorithms for statistical analysis of metabolomics data. Through delivery of validated and well documented algorithms, the developed methods will be reusable.

Nutrition & Health

The Nutrition and Health theme addresses current metabolomics-related challenges in demonstrating benefits of healthy nutrition for consumers. Criteria for success are the ability to predict the (positive) response of consumers to interventions, discover new biomarkers, design and optimize personalised/segmented nutrition and underpin health claims at a mechanistic level.

Plant associate projects

The plant associate partner for NMC is the Centre for Biosystems Genomics. CBSG was established in 2003 and is focussed on two crops: tomato and potato. As food quality and taste are central themes, CBSG from the beginning committed to strategic investments in metabolomics, both to develop wet and dry lab technologies and to apply these to extend our biochemical knowledge of the crops.

Industrial biotechnology

As the central item of the Industrial Biotechnology program, we have chosen to use the metabolomics infrastructure present at TU Delft, TNO, NMC and DSM to study the influence of the extracellular metabolome on the intracellular metabolome and vice versa. As the yeast Saccharomyces is the most widely used microorganism in industrial biotechnology this has been chosen in both projects.

Biomedical

The biomedical program of the NMC aims to identify biomarkers for several important diseases, and to contribute to biological understanding of the underlying pathologies. The emphasis is on metabolomics-based phenotyping of diseases or drug treatment effects in humans and in animal models.