New collaboration between Metabolon and King’s College London to analyze TwinsUK clinical data, gain insights into the interplay between the gut microbial community and human health, and expand disease coverage
MORRISVILLE, N.C. ā June 7, 2022 ā Metabolon, Inc., the global leader in providing metabolomics solutions that advance drug development and precision medicine, announces a partnership with King’s College London to perform metabolomics analysis on TwinsUK registry samples as part of Metabolon’s data access strategy. The size and clinical detail of the TwinsUK cohort will allow Metabolon to investigate a broad number of diseases for new relevant biomarkers and support novel therapeutic development for improved patient outcomes.
The TwinsUK registry is one of the most significant adult twins biospecimens and clinical collections worldwide. Based at King’s College London, the registry includes more than 15,000 identical and non-identical twins from across the U.K., aged between 18 and 100, and their research has expanded to include multiple diseases and conditions. Twin participants attend clinic visits every four years and provide a full suite of samples for health research purposes and long-term biobanking through TwinsUK.
Through this collaboration, Metabolon will analyze data from global metabolomics and targeted short-chain fatty acid assays on fecal, blood, urine, and saliva samples collected by TwinsUK. This will enable Metabolon and TwinsUK to gain insights into the interplay between the gut microbial community and human health. Additionally, the partners will examine clinical data and compare previous metabolomics research studies with the TwinsUK dataset.
“The significance of this work cannot be understated, and we are very excited to work with TwinsUK,” said Rohan Hastie, Ph.D., President and CEO of Metabolon. “By partnering with population cohorts, we can continue to uncover insights into human health and the important role of the microbiome. The participation of individuals in open-data studies is critical to enabling scientific researchers to learn more about human health and disease.”
“We have been working with Metabolon successfully for many years and we are excited to bring this collaboration to the next level,” said Cristina Menni, Ph.D., Metabolomics Lead at TwinsUK. “We believe this will lead to exciting new insights into health and disease.”
“The addition of metabolomics to this already rich dataset will allow our researchers to study the intersection of genes, environment, and phenotype to reveal biomarkers of interest,” said Rangaprasad (Ranga) Sarangarajan, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), Metabolon. “The interpretation of those findings will support a greater understanding of diseases and better inform successful drug development.”
About King’s College London
King’s College London is one of the top 35 U.K. universities in the world, one of the top 10 in Europe (Q.S. World University Rankings, 2020/21), and among the oldest in England. King’s has more than 31,000 students (including more than 12,800 postgraduates) from some 150 countries worldwide and some 8,500 staff. King’s has an outstanding reputation for world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), eighty-four percent of research at King’s was deemed ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent.”
About TwinsUK
TwinsUK is the U.K.’s largest adult twin registry and the most clinically detailed in the world. Since setting up the cohort in 1992, it now has over 15,000 identical and non-identical twins from across the U.K., with ages between eighteen and one hundred. TwinsUK aims to investigate the genetic and environmental basis of a range of complex diseases and conditions. Current research includes the genetics of metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, the musculoskeletal system, aging, sight, the microbiome, and COVID-19. TwinsUK data have enabled multiple collaborations with research groups worldwide and the publication of over 700 research papers.
About Metabolomics
Metabolomics, the large-scale study of all small molecules in a biological system, is the only ‘omics technology that provides a complete current-state functional readout of a biological system. Metabolomics helps researchers see beyond the genetic variation of individuals, capturing the combined impact of genetic as well as external factors such as the effect of drugs, diet, lifestyle, and the microbiome on human health.ā By measuring thousands of discrete chemical signals that form biological pathways in the body, metabolomics can reveal important biomarkers enabling a better understanding of a drug’s mechanism of action, pharmacodynamics, and safety profile, as well as individual responses to therapy. ā
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