Metabolomics for biomedical research and personalized medicine

The metabolome provides a dynamic, comprehensive, and precise portrayal of the phenotype, facilitated by current high-throughput technologies that have unveiled relevant metabolites characterizing diverse human phenotypes regarding health, disease, drug monitoring, and aging. In parallel with genomics, metabolomics has contributed to biomarker discovery and enhanced our understanding of various molecular mechanisms, particularly in the context of precision medicine. The identification of distinct metabolomic profiles holds the potential for refining clinical strategies to treat human diseases. In the foreseeable future, metabolomics will become a routine tool for diagnosing and monitoring health, disease, aging, and drug development. Biomedical applications of metabolomics are already evident in monitoring the progression of metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes, utilizing branched-chain amino acids, acylcarnitines, specific phospholipids, and genomics to assess disease severity and predict potential treatments. Future efforts should establish the applicability and clinical utility of metabolomic-derived markers and their effective integration into large-scale clinical settings.