Grant: Canada Research Chairs

The central theme of my research for this Tier 1 Canada Research Chair is to study natural products (metabolites) and to learn how they can be better used for precision medicine. The comprehensive study of metabolites is called metabolomics. I have been working in the field of metabolomics for >25 years and am considered one of its founders. Metabolites are sometimes called the canaries of the genome. A single DNA mutation can cause a 1000X change in certain metabolites. This huge signal amplification is why metabolomics is frequently used to diagnose and monitor human disease. Metabolomics uses special instruments called mass spectrometers and special software to help identify and quantify metabolites. The identified metabolites can then be used as biomarkers (to diagnose disease) or as drug candidates (to treat disease). My planned research in metabolomics and precision medicine will focus on three areas: 1) improving the performance of metabolomics software and workflows so that more metabolites can be identified in human blood or urine, leading to more precise medical diagnoses; 2) miniaturizing and reducing the cost of metabolomic devices and tests so that metabolomics can move to the clinic, and 3) using metabolomics and indigenous knowledge to discover novel natural products (food or plant-derived) that could be used to precisely treat or prevent human diseases. For the first area of research, I will use innovative techniques in artificial intelligence to help improve the number of metabolites that can be confidently measured by metabolomics systems and identify those that could be best used for precision medical applications. For the second area of research, I will use novel enzyme-based approaches developed in my lab to create low-cost, hand-held sensors that can be used to measure diagnostic metabolite panels for accurate disease detection. For the third area of research, I will use the novel metabolomic techniques mentioned above and apply them to characterize medicinal foods and plants used in indigenous or traditional medicine. From this work, I hope to identify the plant metabolites that lead to their therapeutic efficacy and develop ways of enhancing their therapeutic benefit. This would bring my research in precision medicine full circle, from using metabolomics to diagnose disease more precisely to treating or preventing disease more robustly, by relying on the latest technologies yet looking to the ancient traditions of my ancestors.