METALLOMIC APPROACHES:
INVESTIGATING THE EFFECT OF METALLODRUGS IN DISEASE TREATMENT
LGC Limited, Queens Road, Teddington, Middlesex TW11 0LY, United Kingdom
Most of major-to-ultratrace elements in the human body play essential roles as metalloproteins, metalloenzymes or other metal-containing biomolecules (‘metallomes’) and have been related to specific diseases (e.g. Se, S & Pt - cancer, Al - Alzheimers, V - diabetes & Cd - Auch-auch). Novel hyphenated mass spectrometry methods (profiling methods) for such elements in disease models are urgently required. If successful, such methods will assist in the development of therapeutic approaches further towards clinical trials.
In this tutorial the potential of the parallel combination of elemental and molecular mass spectrometry to investigate the effect of metallodrugs in disease models will be demonstrated through its application to study element speciation
- in vivo experiments of vanadium supplementation in relation with diabetes research and
- in vitro experiments of Se supplementation in relation with cancer research.
Important topics such as the complexity of element speciation analysis in complex micro bio-clinical samples and the lack of “speciated” reference materials, needed for quality control of the speciation measurements.
Why is metallomics important?
"This tutorial will discuss advances in mass spectrometry strategies, which are essential to investigate the effect of metallodrugs in the treatment/prevention of human diseases (e.g. cancer and diabetes mellitus). Such reference methods are not intended for the daily use in clinical laboratories but are urgently needed for the validation of clinical measurements. In a long term, the translation of accurate quantitative measurement & identification of elemental species for cancer & diabetes studies through approved clinical/supplementation trials is timely, highly relevant to society & will assist development of other combination therapies.
Who should attend your tutorial?
Analytical chemists, metrologists, instrument and drug manufacturers and experts on the clinical and nutritional fields. Also, those affected by cancer or diabetes mellitus will find it interesting.
What will they hear?
Hopefully, this tutorial will demonstrate how and why successful approaches to the investigation of the mechanisms by which metallodrugs can prevent/cure human diseases, are those that combine several disciplines including molecular & cell biology, analytical & clinical chemistry. And last but not least, the importance of having a quality control system in place and the adequate analytical instrumentation to produce high quality speciation data from the analysis of complex micro-biological samples will be discussed.
