LAUSR

Metabolomics has become a valuable approach to discover novel biomarkers and to increase the mechanistic understanding of many deceases, while lipidomics is one of the hottest points of research areas related to metabolomics, which attracted dramatic attention during the past years. Therefore, this special issue focuses on the analytical methods for metabolomics and lipidomics to provide our readers with recent developments in these areas. Eight papers collected here are contributed by some excellent groups from different countries and the contents cover entire range of metabolomics research, including method development, data processing and applications. Dr. González-Domı́nguez and coworkers from Universidad de Huelva, Spain, explore the utility of metabolomics based on direct infusion mass spectrometry (MS) for analyzing blood samples. The most important analytical concerns to be considered are discussed, including sample handling, comprehensive fingerprinting, and subsequent identification of metabolites and global characterization of metabolomic profiles. As an example, a brief review on the application of these metabolomic platforms in Alzheimer’s disease research is also provided. Prof. Moon, et al. from Yonsei University, Korea, reviewed the techniques of offline and on-line coupling of flow field-flow fractionation with MS for the analysis of blood plasma lipoproteins, and the processes of bottom–up and top–down approaches. While both methods aim to quantify the lipids within lipoproteins, the bottom–up approach provides an extensive lipidome, whereas the top–down method is suitable for high speed targeted lipidomic analysis. As well known, separation and identification of lipid molecules is of great significance and remains challenging because of the existing of many lipid isomers. The separation of lipid isomers by supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) has received more and more attention, and Dr. Bai and her coworkers from Peking University briefly introduces the principle of SFC and its applications in lipid isomer separation. Dr. Ding’s group from China Pharmaceutical University discussed the noninvasive detection and imaging of matrix metalloproteinases for cancer diagnosis. It is concluded that the probes designed for matrix metalloproteinase detection commonly have two features. One is off-then-on state in detection signal, and another is specific retention upon sensing matrix metalloproteinases. The development of theory and technology for biomarker probe design will be beneficial to the accurate diagnosis and effective treatment of cancers. & Huwei Liu [email protected]