A high-throughput lipidomics platform for population-level genetic studies
Watch this on-demand webinar to learn about the development of a high-throughput lipidomics platform and its application in population profiling studies
12 Sept 2022
Lipidomics research involves the full characterization of the complete set of lipids in a biological system. This webinar will describe the development of a high-throughput targeted LC/-MS lipidomics platform, the application of this platform to population profiling studies, and the integration with genomic data.
In this free on-demand SelectScience webinar, Professor Peter Meikle, Head of the Metabolomics Laboratory at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, will address some of the challenges in lipidomics and the opportunities provided by population-level profiling studies. Prof. Meikle will further highlight a recent web portal that provides both lipidomic methodologies and tools as well as the lipidomic PheWeb platform.
Key learning objectives:
- Become familiar with lipidomic methodology
- Understand the genetic analysis of plasma lipid species
- Understand lipid associations with cardiovascular disease
Read on for highlights from the live Q&A session, or watch the webinar on demand, at a time that suits you.
What are you most excited about for the future of your work in this field?
PM: The reason why this is becoming exciting now is that we are getting quite close to translating a lot of this work into clinical applications. We have a very strong program looking at translating a lot of these lipids into lipid profiles for risk assessment, not only for the risk of cardiovascular disease, but also for general metabolic health screens that we can give to the general population. That's one area that we are probably only a couple of years away from having something that's ready for use.
The other area is the therapeutic side. Through these studies, we've identified that a particular class of lipids seems to be protective for a number of metabolic diseases. This class of lipids are called plasmalogens, and they seem to play a protective role for both cardiovascular disease, for fatty liver disease, and potentially for Alzheimer's disease. All of which have similar metabolic dysregulation contributing to those disease outcomes. These plasmalogens are amenable to modulation using dietary supplements that consist of precursor molecules that can be metabolized in the body to plasmalogens.
We are doing pre-clinical studies at the moment in this area, and hopefully, we will be going into clinical studies in the not-too-distant future. They are just a couple of examples of how this type of technology and this type of approach can really lead to changes in the clinic.
Where can our attendees keep up to date with your research or further work in this field?
PM: We publish fairly extensively on this and other work. This particular lipidomic study has just been published in Nature Communications 2022 Jun 6;13(1):3124. Keep an eye on our website, and particularly the portal. We're continuing to develop that and put new resources on that that people can use for their own research.