Analytical chemistry has always been the key to advances in scientific knowledge. It bridges the gap between a hypothesis and a theory by providing tools to test and validate our ideas. Nowadays, its power is greater than ever. Breathtaking advances in instrumental analysis and computational capabilities make it possible to separate and measure myriad compounds in very complex samples. In turn, these advances have opened the door to –omics technologies – including metabolomics. Metabolomics is a powerful approach because metabolite concentrations, unlike genes or proteins, directly reflect the biochemical activity of a biological system. Metabolomics represents the phenotype, and gives real-time data on the end points that matter (for example, illness or response to a drug).

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About the Author

Coral Barbas

Coral Barbas’ research career started at Biochemistry Lab with Prof Emilio Herrera, developing and validating chromatographic methods for bioanalysis. In 2005-06 she obtained a Marie Curie fellowship for Experienced Researchers at Kings College London, where she was introduced to Metabolomics concepts and workflow.

Once back to San Pablo CEU University she succeeded in getting funding from public and private sources as well as from the university to establish the Centre for Metabolomics and Bioanalysis (CEMBIO), that she has headed since then. Currently CEMBIO is a leading lab in Metabolomics using mass spectrometry coupled to different separation techniques (GC-MS, LC-MS and CE-MS). It offers: searching metabolic changes without a priori hypothesis to unveil mechanism of drug action, toxicity or resistance, patient stratification based on non-target metabolomics, as well as target pathway analysis. CEMBIO has the capacity for tackling aspects such as experimental design, analytical methods, appropriate statistical methods for metabolomics data treatment and biochemical interpretation.

Techniques for target analysis are also available and method development is part of the expertise. With these purposes CEMBIO´s group includes over 20 researchers in all levels from technicians to pre-doc, postdocs and staff with expertise in analytical techniques, statistics, pharmacy and biochemistry.

Currently she is Visiting Professor at Imperial College London (UK) collaborating with Prof Jeremy Nicholson´s group and at Bialystok Medical University (Poland) collaborating with the doctorate program in “OMICS” technologies. She has published over 160 research papers all in journals with high impact factors.