• Find people
• Intranet

Applied metabolomics Óscar Pozo

The Applied Metabolomics Research Group (LIMA) is a young group but with extensive experience in the development of analytical methods and their application in the field of health. Our research has led to the discovery of new metabolic pathways, disease markers and mechanisms of action linked to certain disease states.

The group also includes the IMIM Metabolomics Platform and is part of the European infrastructure for translational medicine, Eatris (https://eatris.eu/), the Spanish Metabolomics Network (https://metabored.org/), and the multidisciplinary centre TECNIO, BAPP (http://bapp.upf.edu/?lang=es).

Our motivation:

Our main motivation is to make our metabolomics research useful in health-related scientific projects. Based on the principle that combining different fields of expertise is vital for obtaining robust results, we believe that the usefulness of metabolomic analysis is maximised when it is oriented to specific questions proposed by clinicians/researchers in direct contact with patients.

Lines of research:

At present, LIMA's activity can be divided into three main lines of research

• Developing and applying metabolomic strategies for detecting biomarkers of different disease states. The main goal of this research is to develop targeted metabolomics methods for detecting changes in specific metabolic pathways (steroidogenesis, neurotransmitters, lipids, carboxylic acids, the kynurenine pathway, glycolysis, etc.) and applying this method to different areas of clinical interest, such as neurosciences, cancer, rare diseases, epidemiology and cardiovascular diseases.
• Elucidating alternative forms of conjugation and assessing their clinical relevance. The main objective of this research area is to characterise conjugated metabolites and determine their clinical relevance. So far, different families of previously undescribed (cysteine or succinate conjugates) or undervalued (bis-conjugates) conjugates have been detected and their relevance in different areas such as depression, prenatal diagnosis and anti-doping control is being studied.
• Developing guided metabolomic strategies and applying these in clinical research. The main goal of this area of research is to develop metabolomics methods capable of the non-targeted detection of metabolites with specific structural characteristics. This allows the detection and elucidation of metabolites that lie beyond pre-established metabolic pathways. We are currently applying this technology in cancer to search for oncometabolites.