Metabolomics

Discovering the Unknown

Human milk is among the most chemically complex biofluids, comprising thousands of small molecules that influence infant nutrition, immune development, microbial colonization, and long-term health. Untargeted metabolomics enables unbiased, comprehensive profiling of this molecular diversity - capturing endogenous metabolites, dietary and environmental exposures, drug metabolites, and microbially derived compounds - thereby overcoming the limitations of targeted assays and supporting discovery-driven insight into human milk biology.

Leveraging World-Class Expertise and Technology

The challenge of untargeted metabolomics is the analysis. Using the cutting edge computational strategies developed by the Dorrestein lab, the team has been able to discover many previously uncharacterized molecules including new drug metabolites, bile acids, and other microbial metabolites. Several recently created new tools improve our ability to read out drugs/drug metabolites, bile acids and N-acyl lipids. Further annotation using MS/MS-based molecular networking enables discovery of new modified forms of molecules even when there is no isotopically labeled drug provided. In addition, microbeMASST connects metabolites with their respective microbial taxonomical classification.

This expertise and technological repertoire is poised to enable new discoveries in human milk research.