The Metabolome Analysis and Lead Optimization Services group enables drug discovery by focusing on: metabolite fingerprinting of cells from hosts and pathogens in response to drug treatment, and development and implementation of high-throughput cellular and biochemical assay screens.

"Metabolomics" is a whole cell measurement of all the metabolites and it is considered to be equivalent to transcriptomics in mRNA expression analysis. Metabolite concentration levels can also be measured in a high-throughput and qualitative fashion. Referred to as "metabolic finger printing" and is used routinely in disease detection and in comparing transgenic organisms in wild-type. Some of its advantages can be listed as follows:

• It allows the discovery of new high-resolution quantitative images of functionally relevant metabolite clusters.
• All bodily fluids such as plasma, cerebrospinal fluid and urine as well as isolated cells and biopsy material can be analyzed.
• High throughput capability allows simultaneous monitoring of multiple experimental alterations in biological samples.
• High sensitivity secures that microliter quantities suffice to simultaneously analyze multiple pathways and arrays of metabolites.

Click here to view select projects on metabolomics.

The Unique selling point (USP) of Avesthagen lies in the identification of pathways through an integration of data from different biological databases by combining the data obtained through metabolic profiling with known data using bioinformatic tools.

Avesthagen provides metabolomic services for:

• Drug lead optimization by metabolomic profiling of targets, such as bacteria
• Structure Activity Relationship (SAR) studies, based on biological assays

Technologies / Infrastructure

• LC-Mass Spec
• Mammalian cell culture
• HTS systems, including plate readers, cell harvesters and radioactivity counters