Vassilios Fanos
Biography
Professore ordinario di Pediatria e Direttore della Scuola di Specialità in Pediatria, Università di Cagliari, Italia. Direttore dell'Unità di Terapia Intensiva Neonatale dell'Università di Cagliari. Immediato Past-President dell'Unione UMEMPS, Presidente Società Italiana di Psicologia Pediatrica. Direttore della rivista Giornale di Medicina Individualizzata Pediatrica e Neonatale. Con la metabolomica ha vinto 3 progetti europei, 2 PNNR con sovvenzioni europee, 2 progetti italiani CCM. Autore di 476 articoli su PubMed, 32 libri (8 in inglese). Relatore in > 150 congressi internazionali in più di 40 nazioni.
Abstract
Metabolomics is an approach based on the systematic study of the complete set of metabolites in a biological sample. Other definitions such as ‘metabolomic profile’, ‘metabolic footprint’ and ‘metabolite target analysis’ are used in current practice. The term ‘metabolomics’ is derived from the Greek metabolí (same root as ‘metabolism’), meaning ‘change’, and the suffix -oma, meaning ‘all’. It is the global study of metabolites, small molecules present in cells, tissues, organs and biological fluids. These are lipids, carbohydrates, small peptides, amino acids and vitamins. Taken together, metabolites constitute a metabolic fingerprint, a kind of metabolic fingerprint specific to each individual. The metabolome is so close to the phenotype that it can be considered the phenotype itself: it is considered the most predictive phenotype and is able to account for epigenetic differences. Genomics is ‘to be able to’, transcriptomics is ‘to start’, proteomics is ‘to do’, metabolomics is ‘to be’. Metabolomics forms the basis for personalised or tailor-made medicine. It consists of 2 sequential steps: 1) an analytical technique (usually nuclear magnetic resonance, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry) capable of measuring a large number of metabolites present in biological samples; 2) multivariate statistical processing of the data obtained from the analysed samples.
