Title: Insights from the NMR metabolome in UK biobank – new biology and translational prospects
Abstract: Blood lipids and metabolites are biomarkers for future disease onset. Many such biomarkers are used in research settings, but only few make it to routine clinical use. This talk will present how detailed metabolic profiling in the UK Biobank provides novel scientific insights and can be translated to consumer applications.
Nightingale Health Plc. has developed a high-throughput metabolomics platform, which quantifies diverse blood biomarkers from multiple metabolic pathways, including lipoprotein measures, fatty acids and small molecules such as amino acids, ketones, and glycolysis metabolites. This platform has been widely used in cohort studies and trials and has resulted in more than 350 scientific publications. Recently, Nightingale’s nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) platform was used to profile the UK Biobank. The first tranche of the data for over 100,000 participants was released to the research community in 2021.
The presentation will focus on the scientific insights gained from the first release of the NMR metabolic biomarker data in UK biobank. The results reveal a prominent role of abundant circulating lipids and metabolites as risk markers beyond cardiometabolic diseases, including susceptibility to infectious diseases and risk for the onset of respiratory diseases, joint disorders and mental health outcomes. The talk will also highlight the application of the biomarkers for risk prediction of various common diseases to identify individuals at several fold increased risk compared to the remaining population. Release of the NMR biomarker data at scale in the UK Biobank highlights the promise of metabolic profiling in large cohorts for public health and translational research.
Biographies
Peter Würtz and Heli Julkunen are data scientists at Nightingale Health Plc, the Finnish innovator of an internationally recognized metabolomics platform for large cohorts, biobanks, and trials. They are leading Nightingale’s data analyses on the UK Biobank, and have published scientific articles on biomarker discovery and risk prediction using the UK Biobank NMR biomarker data. They have also been involved in productising the findings for consumer and patient use.
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