Metabolon has collaborated with the FinnGen study in Finland to provide metabolomics data for population health studies to improve understanding of human health.
Why collaborate?
FinnGen will incorporate deep metabolomic datasets to better understand how genetic drivers of disease may impact biological function and influence disease progression. The initiative has already identified over 400 new disease-associated variants enriched in the Finnish population.
The findings
These findings provide the potential for further functional studies and new insight in disease mechanisms. FinnGen’s collaboration with Metabolon enables this by adding deep metabolomics data generated from a subset of study participants who carry some of these medically interesting genetic variants.
Metabolon’s role
Metabolon’s metabolomics platform is optimised to detect and identify 5,400+ metabolites across 70 major biochemical pathways for an array of samples such as plasma, urine, and tissues.
Metabolon says its metabolomics platform enables has potential for improved patient stratification by disease severity to highlight key biological differences between groups, providing new or enhanced precision medicine treatments. These enriched datasets can support research into new biomarkers, disease diagnostics, and to develop new therapeutics.
Official comments
“FinnGen is an incredible genomic initiative that will now add deep metabolomic datasets to enrich their current genomic and clinical datasets,” said Dr. Karl Quinn, Director of Population Health, International Business, Metabolon. “These combined datasets enable academic and pharma researchers to better understand disease and conduct multi-omic analyses to develop new biomarkers, diagnostic tools, and novel therapeutics.”
“One of the key interests in FinnGen is to understand biological consequences of genetic disease associated variants that are enriched in the Finnish population. Metabolomic analyses have the potential to provide important insight to this aim,” said Professor Aarno Palotie, FinnGen Scientific Director from the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), University of Helsinki.
