New advances in nutritional metabolomics for global health: Are you getting enough?

Palestrante:  Prof. Dr. Philip Britz McKibbin – Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology – McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario – Canada

Resumo: A suboptimal diet is a leading modifiable risk factor in chronic disease burden globally that is typically evaluated using questionnaires by epidemiologists despite being prone to bias and misreporting. This presentation will focus on new advances in mass spectrometry (MS)-based metabolomics research when coupled to capillary electrophoresis (CE) that may allow for more reliable assessment of dietary exposures and their health impacts in large-scale epidemiological studies. A capillary electrophoresis assay for surveillance of iodine deficiency in the Canadian population will first be presented. This work revealed differences in iodine nutrition and exposures to environmental iodine uptake inhibitors in four different regions across Canada. Also, new advances in rapid screening for vitamin D deficiency will be presented using direct infusion-tandem mass spectrometry together with clink derivatization via 2-nitrosopyridine labeling as compared to immunoassays and LC-MS/MS methods. This approach was rigorously validated in support of a randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial aimed at rapid restoration of vitamin D deficiency in critically ill children across Canada. Lastly, I will present a new approach for non-invasive screening of the omega-3 index in urine samples using untargeted metabolomic analyses by multisegment injection-capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry given widespread deficiency of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids in the diet. A panel of urinary metabolites were identified as promising candidate biomarkers following high-dose DHA and/or EPA supplementation as compared to baseline and placebo, which may allow for low-cost home testing via dried urine collected on filter paper cards. References: 1. Mathiaparanam et al. The prevalence and risk factors associated with iodine deficiency in Canadian adults. Nutrients 2022 14:2570. 2. Helmeczi et al. A high-throughput platform for the rapid screening of vitamin D status by direct infusion-MS/MS. J. Lipid Res. 2022 63:100204. 3. MacIntyre et al. Urinary metabolite profiling to non-invasively monitor the omega-3 index: An exploratory secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial in young adults. Metabolites 2023 13:1071.

Philip Britz-McKibbin is a Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. Dr. Britz-McKibbin obtained his BSc in Chemistry (U. Toronto, 1994), and PhD in Analytical Chemistry (UBC, 2000) and a Japan Society for Promotion of Science PDF position in Japan (Hyogo University, 2001-2003) prior to starting his academic position at McMaster. His research group is an affiliate member of The Metabolomics Innovation Centre (TMIC) – Canada’s national metabolomics laboratory. His research interests in bio-analytical chemistry, separation science, mass spectrometry and metabolomics include the design of novel analytical strategies to quantify and identify metabolites of clinical significance in complex biological samples. Philip’s laboratory aims to discover new biomarkers that support early detection and improved therapeutic interventions with emphasis on inherited metabolic disorders and chronic human diseases ranging from cystic fibrosis to inflammatory bowel disease. His research interests include the development of high throughput metabolic screening methods for large-scale epidemiological studies with recent focus on evaluating dietary and tobacco smoke exposures in global populations.