It is the systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind - specifically, the study of their small-molecule metabolite profiles
Published in Chapter:
Current Omics Technologies in Biomarker Discovery
Wei Ding (Merck & Co., Inc., USA), Ping Qiu (Merck & Co., Inc., USA), Yan-Hui Liu (Merck & Co., Inc., USA), and Wenqing Feng (Accela Sciences, LLC, USA)
Copyright: © 2011
|Pages: 33
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-491-2.ch004
Abstract
Biomarkers are playing an increasingly important role in drug discovery and development and can be applied for many purposes, including disease mechanism study, diagnosis, prognosis, staging, and treatment selection. Advances in high-throughput “omics” technologies, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, significantly accelerate the pace of biomarker discovery. Comprehensive molecular profiling using these “omics” technology has become a field of intensive research aiming at identifying biomarkers relevant for improved diagnostics and therapeutics. Although each “omics” technology plays important roles in biomarker research, different “omics” platforms have different strengths and limitations. This chapter aims to give an overview of these “omics” technologies and their current application in the biomarker discovery.