The role of metabolomics in personalized medicine

Personalized medicine is a rapidly emerging approach to medicine guided by scientific insights into genetic make-up and molecular dynamics of health and disease. This approach relies on “-omics” technologies that aim to define molecular mechanisms of a human body in health and disease. Personalized medicine is a generic entity that has been practiced for decades within evidence-based framework. This approach is slow and potentially dangerous as it relies on the very first choice of treatment to be the most effective. In the scenario, when the first treatment is not as effective, an assessment is made following which, an alternate medicine is prescribed, which may not be the best solution always, and so the cycle goes. Metabolomics, an approach that can quantify small molecules in a given biofluid measures snapshot of health or disease. Small molecules reflecting larger changes in proteins or lipids are personalized signature's of an individual's health.