Metabolomics and Biomarker Discovery in Critical Care Therapeutics

Dear Colleagues,

Metabolomics is crucial for understanding the biochemical complexity of critical illness, providing a dynamic, systems-level view of physiological and pathological processes. In critical care settings, where patients often present with rapidly evolving and heterogeneous conditions, metabolomics enables the capture of acute metabolic alterations that reflect disease mechanisms, progression, and therapeutic response.

This Special Issue of Metabolites, “Metabolomics and Biomarker Discovery in Critical Care Therapeutics,” focuses on the role of metabolomics in advancing biomarker discovery and improving clinical decision-making in critically ill populations. Traditional clinical parameters often lack sensitivity or timeliness, whereas metabolomic profiling can reveal early and mechanistically informative changes across conditions such as sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), traumatic brain injury (TBI), cardiovascular instability, and multi-organ dysfunction.

In critical care therapeutics, metabolomics bridges molecular insights and clinical application in a truly translational approach. It supports the identification of diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers, enables patient stratification, and facilitates the monitoring of disease trajectory and treatment response. In addition, metabolomic profiling provides insight into key dysregulated pathways, including energy metabolism, mitochondrial dysfunction, immune–metabolic interactions, and oxidative stress, offering opportunities for targeted therapeutic strategies.

Importantly, integrating metabolite biomarkers with other data layers—such as protein markers and clinical variables—represents a critical next step, enabling more accurate diagnosis, improved prognostic models, and a more comprehensive understanding of disease heterogeneity in critical care.

This Special Issue highlights research with strong translational relevance, including biomarker discovery and validation studies, as well as comprehensive review articles that provide conceptual frameworks and methodological guidance for advancing biomarker discovery in critical care. Contributions focus on clinically oriented investigations utilizing metabolomics information to improve early diagnosis, outcome prediction, and therapeutic monitoring while also addressing challenges in study design, data integration, and translation into clinical practice.

Dr. Mohammad Mehdi Banoei
Prof. Dr. Brent Warren Winston
Guest Editors

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