Open Medicine Foundation newsletter, May 2016: Announcing the Expanded ME/CFS Metabolomics Study
Now that the Severely Ill-BIG DATA Study is fully underway, we want to perform multiple investigations at the same time. Because of the many recent small and large donations, we can start another research project now without waiting.
We are very excited to announce an amazing new collaboration with Dr. Robert Naviaux and our very own Dr. Ronald Davis, director of our ME/CFS Scientific Advisory Board. As previously announced, Dr. Naviaux (of the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine) joined our Advisory Board and brings remarkable knowledge in metabolomics and mitochrondia.
In addition to Dr. Naviaux and Dr. Davis, the new study is being conducted in collaboration with Dr. Paul Cheney and Dr. Eric Gordon’s team. Dr. Davis will correlate the metabolic findings with genetic results.
What is Metabolomics: Simply put, it’s the study of metabolites, which are chemicals produced as cells carry out their functions. When you know what a body’s cells are producing, you can find out how the cells are functioning, whether normally or abnormally. And if it’s not functioning normally, you can see what aspect of the cells’ activities are defective by measuring the metabolites.
Dr Robert K. Naviaux writes about metabolomics:
Dr Eric Gordon, his team in Northern California and I recently completed a metabolomics study of over 80 patients with ME/CFS and normal controls. The results showed that there was a chemical signature in ME/CFS that might ultimately be used to help physicians diagnose and treat these diseases.
The results were so exciting that we have expanded our pursuit and have launched a validation study in a completely independent group of over 100 ME/CFS patients (already chosen and ready to go) and controls from across the US and Canada. A grant from OMF will make this new study possible.
If the results of the first study are validated in the new study, then both patients and physicians will benefit. The practical application of metabolomics as a research tool in medicine is happening now.
OMF is leading the way to new hope for every patient with complex chronic diseases by collaborating with world-renowned, creative scientists to help search for the molecular causes that underlie the myriad of diverse symptoms. Progress is being made on many fronts. In just a year from now, we should have the science to add NextGen metabolomics to the tool kit needed to crack the mystery of ME/CFS.
Metabolomics
Metabolomics is one of the hottest rising stars in the high tech race to gain a molecular understanding of health and disease. Metabolomics uses a machine called a “mass spectrometer” to measure hundreds of chemicals in our blood.
In our lab, at University of California San Diego, with a single blood specimen, we can measure over 500 of these chemicals from over 60 different biochemical pathways.
These chemicals are the building blocks that cells use to grow and function, to fight and to heal. Like a Hubble telescope for medicine, metabolomics is allowing us to see deeper and with greater clarity into the universe of the cell than has ever been possible before. In a drop of blood, we can “eavesdrop” on the collective conversations of all the cells in the body.
In ME/CFS, as in many complex chronic diseases, many genes interact with many environmental factors encountered at times of vulnerability. Complex diseases are not predestined by our genes alone. Complex diseases are ecogenetic—resulting from the interaction of genes inherited from our ancestors, and environmental factors we encounter in a lifetime. Our metabolism is the real-time readout of the gene-environment interaction. Metabolomics is a new lens that allows us to “see” this inner world of the cell in a new way that lends itself to scientific discovery.
This new vision is leading to breakthroughs in our understanding of why patients with ME/CFS get stuck in a cycle of pain and suffering and disability. But more importantly, metabolomics is also shedding light on how rational therapies designed to trigger a return to health might be just around the corner.
