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Friday, September 16, 2011

Catching Metabolic Pathways in the Act: Navigating the Heavy Water World


A press release on September 16th on Market Watch about KineMed caught my attention (link).  KineMed, based in Emeryville CA, has developed new proteomics and metabolomics tools that enable the monitoring of metabolic flux through complex biological pathways by exploiting the power of deuterated water (or heavy water: 2H2O) labeling.  By monitoring the kinetic of predictable mass shift of molecules of interest by mass spectrometry, the scientists at KineMed have been able to ascertain complex dynamic processes such as blood clotting, complement cascade activation, epidermal turnover in psoriasis patients, anterograde neuronal transport in ALS and PD patients, and DNA turnover rate in leukemia and breast cancer (see a video presentation by Marc K. Hellerstein, M.D., Ph.D.; co-founder of KineMed)

Because of its non-radioactive nature and ease of deployment (deuterated water is simply administered as a glass of water), this technique offers the prospect of identifying new biomarkers related to disease processes, drug mechanism of action, and drug toxicities.  It is important to remember though that this technique does not allow for in situ metabolism monitoring and thus still requires sample collection.  Therefore, the usual limitations associated with the collection of biosamples do apply to this new technique.



Thierry Sornasse for Integrated Biomarker Strategy

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