Nuclear Magnetic Resonance-Powered Metabolomics: Progress and Future Prospects

A special issue of Metabolites (ISSN 2218-1989). This special issue belongs to the section "Advances in Metabolomics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2025 | Viewed by 2363

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Cancer Biology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Interests: metabolomics; solution-state NMR; computational biology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Metabolomics has undergone a transformation in recent years, and much of its success can be attributed to rapid developments made in analytical techniques like nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Metabolomics has found applications in diverse areas, from establishing a fundamental understanding of altered metabolism in diseases like cancer to disease diagnosis using biomarkers and drug discovery.

The metabolomics study workflow can be divided into stages, including sample preparation, data collection, data analysis and metabolite and/or metabolic pathway identification. In this Special Issue, we focus on the advances made in these stages of the metabolomics workflow. Representative examples include, but are not limited to, (a) novel sample preparation approaches with enriched or selective isotope labelling for in-cell NMR studies; (b) advances in rapid data collection using one- or two-dimensional NMR experiments; (c) software and statistical techniques for analyzing data and identifying metabolites and mapping them to metabolic pathways; and (d) applications of NMR metabolomics in understanding diseases, biomarker discovery, and metabolic engineering

Dr. Abhinav Dubey
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • solution-state NMR
  • metabolism
  • clinical studies
  • biomarker discovery
  • high-throughput data analysis

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 6266 KiB  
Article
How Early Can Pancreatic Tumors Be Detected Using NMR-Based Urine Metabolic Profiling? Identification of Early-Stage Biomarkers of Tumor Initiation and Progression in an Orthotopic Xenograft Mouse Model of Pancreatic Cancer
by Tafadzwa Chihanga, Shenyuan Xu, Hannah N. Fultz, Jenna D. Nicholson, Mark D. Brombacher, Kayla Hawkins, Dan R. Fay, Maria M. Steil, Shuisong Ni and Michael A. Kennedy
Metabolites 2025, 15(3), 142; https://doi.org/10.3390/metabo15030142 - 20 Feb 2025
Viewed by 776
Abstract
Background: Pancreatic cancer is the most lethal of all human cancers. The disease has no obvious symptoms in its early stages and in the majority of cases, the cancer goes undetected until it has advanced to the point that surgery is no longer [...] Read more.
Background: Pancreatic cancer is the most lethal of all human cancers. The disease has no obvious symptoms in its early stages and in the majority of cases, the cancer goes undetected until it has advanced to the point that surgery is no longer a viable option or until it has metastasized to other organs. The absence of reliable and sensitive biomarkers for the early detection of pancreatic cancer contributes to the poor ability to detect the disease before it progresses to an untreatable stage. Objectives: Here, an orthotopic xenograft mouse model of pancreatic cancer was investigated to determine if urinary metabolic biomarkers could be identified and used to detect the early formation of pancreatic tumors. Methods: The orthotopic xenograft mouse model of pancreatic cancer was established by injecting human MiaPaCa-2 cells, derived from a male patient aged 65 years with pancreatic adenocarcinoma, into the pancreata of severe combined immunodeficient mice. Orthotopic pancreatic tumors, allowed to grow for eight weeks, were successfully established in the pancreata in 15 out of 20 mice. At the time of sacrifice, tumors were excised and histologically analyzed and the masses and volumes recorded. Urine samples were collected prior to injection, at one-week post injection, and every two weeks afterwards for eight weeks. Results: NMR-based metabolic profiling of the urine samples indicated that 31 metabolites changed significantly over the course of tumor initiation and growth. Longitudinal metabolic profiling analysis indicated an initial increase in activity of the metabolic pathways involved in energy production and/or cell synthesis by cancer cells as required to support tumor growth that was followed by a diminished difference between control and orthotopic mice associated with tumor senescence as the tumors reached 7–8 weeks post injection. Conclusions: The results indicate that NMR-based urinary metabolic profiling may be able to detect the earliest stages of pancreatic tumor initiation and growth, highlighting the potential for translation to human clinical studies. Full article
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14 pages, 3566 KiB  
Article
Neural Networks for Conversion of Simulated NMR Spectra from Low-Field to High-Field for Quantitative Metabolomics
by Hayden Johnson and Aaryani Tipirneni-Sajja
Metabolites 2024, 14(12), 666; https://doi.org/10.3390/metabo14120666 - 1 Dec 2024
Viewed by 1074
Abstract
Background: The introduction of benchtop NMR instruments has made NMR spectroscopy a more accessible, affordable option for research and industry, but the lower spectral resolution and SNR of a signal acquired on low magnetic field spectrometers may complicate the quantitative analysis of spectra. [...] Read more.
Background: The introduction of benchtop NMR instruments has made NMR spectroscopy a more accessible, affordable option for research and industry, but the lower spectral resolution and SNR of a signal acquired on low magnetic field spectrometers may complicate the quantitative analysis of spectra. Methods: In this work, we compare the performance of multiple neural network architectures in the task of converting simulated 100 MHz NMR spectra to 400 MHz with the goal of improving the quality of the low-field spectra for analyte quantification. Multi-layered perceptron networks are also used to directly quantify metabolites in simulated 100 and 400 MHz spectra for comparison. Results: The transformer network was the only architecture in this study capable of reliably converting the low-field NMR spectra to high-field spectra in mixtures of 21 and 87 metabolites. Multi-layered perceptron-based metabolite quantification was slightly more accurate when directly processing the low-field spectra compared to high-field converted spectra, which, at least for the current study, precludes the need for low-to-high-field spectral conversion; however, this comparison of low and high-field quantification necessitates further research, comparison, and experimental validation. Conclusions: The transformer method of NMR data processing was effective in converting low-field simulated spectra to high-field for metabolomic applications and could be further explored to automate processing in other areas of NMR spectroscopy. Full article
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