What is it about?
Metabolic profiling means to look at a large number of chemical compounds simultaneously (for example, using a technology called mass spectrometry). We can profile different tissues from an organism: serum, plasma, urine, sputum and others. In this review article, we look at how metabolic profiling shows the changes of an organism upon infection or vaccination, and how it can be used in vaccine trials, for example to monitor the effects a vaccine has on the organism.
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Why is it important?
Vaccines are one of the most important tools in war on infectious diseases. Vaccines development, however, is costly, takes a lot of time and often fails. We think that with the aid of metabolic profiling, vaccine development can be faster and cheaper.
Perspectives
Metabolic profiling is not as popular as, for example, transcriptomic profiling (looking at gene expression). However, it provides valuable information which sometimes cannot be found in genes alone, and we think it has a great potential in future applications.
Dr January 3rd Weiner
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Forderung der Wissenschaften
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The potential of metabolic profiling for vaccine development, Seminars in Immunology, July 2018, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.smim.2018.07.002.
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