"Chemical separations for metabolomics: new advances in biomarker discovery for population health"
Dr. Philip Britz-McKibbin (McMaster)

The future of medicine requires innovations in evidence-based interventions that promote disease prevention and healthy living on a population level. Comprehensive metabolite profiling (i.e., metabolomics) offers a holistic approach for understanding the phenotype of an organism at a molecular level that is closely associated with clinical outcomes. An introduction to capillary electrophoresis (CE) and CE-mass spectrometry (MS) technology will first be presented in the context of public health initiatives for human disease prevention. Recent strategies for enhancing sample throughput, data fidelity and unknown identification in metabolomics will also be discussed for biomarker discovery when using multiplexed separations. Pre-analytical and post-analytical variables that contribute to false discoveries will be outlined when evaluating the metabolic phenotype or “metabotype” of an organism. Recent studies will include the discovery of putative markers for early detection of cystic fibrosis in newborn screening programs, food-specific markers for validation of dietary interventions that promote human health, as well as risk assessment of smoke-exposure in firefighters conducting training exercises in burn houses. 

A pivotal experience analyzing human urine (his own) as an undergraduate student spawned a long-lived fascination with the characterization of human biofluids to bring forth new insights into human health and disease risk. "After completing my PhD at the University of British Columbia, I was first introduced to seemingly insurmountable analytical challenges in metabolomics during my postdoctoral research in Japan prior to joining the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at McMaster University in 2003.” His research interests include the development of novel separation methods and analytical tools for metabolite profiling, biomarker discovery and drug screening that are aimed at the prevention and/or treatment of human diseases.

He is the guest of Dr. Dajana Vuckovic.