The Netherlands Metabolomics Centre (NMC) aims to create a world-class metabolomics knowledge infrastructure, to improve personal health and quality of life. NMC is a public-private consortium, consisting of Unilever, DSM, MSD, TNO, Plant Research International / Wageningen University, University Medical Centre Utrecht, University of Amsterdam and Leiden University / Leiden University Medical Centre. NMC is one of the four technology centres of the Netherlands Genomics Initiative (NGI), and one of the in total 16 Genomics centres in the Netherlands. NMC has received a grant from the Netherlands Genomics Initiative (NGI), € 25 million for research and, in addition, € 1.5 million for valorization. All partners together invest another € 26.5 million in matching activities (for instance: clinical studies, additional R&D projects, principal investigator’s wage).
The NMC-program started in the summer of 2008; its core technology development program consists of three themes:
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Quantitative Profiling
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Biostatistics
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Metabolite Identification
The technologies and applications that have been developed in the NMC-core program, are applied to biological questions in the NMC’s associate projects. In these projects we work closely together with other NGI-centres, Top Institutes and companies. The Associate projects are:
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Nutrition & Health
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Biomedical
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Plant
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Industrial Biotechnology
The Demonstration & Competence Lab is at the heart of the associate projects, where NMC’s analytical platforms and tools are used for routine measurement of up to 1000s of metabolites in thousands of samples.
Data Support Platform will consist of a data warehouse and a data processing pipeline. The data warehouse will include a Generic Study Capture Framework Tool and will allow the exchange of data within NMC and the more accurate comparisons between different metabolomics studies.
NMC’s vision is that metabolomics already is, and will be even more so in the future, an essential tool in the life sciences. Metabolomics is a young discipline and has not yet reached its full potential and therefore a joint national and international multi-disciplinary effort is required to develop the proper technology and strategies for metabolomics (to get the right samples, the right data, and to interpret them correctly).