About this Research Topic
Chemical exposure is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. However, the mechanisms involved in the majority of chemical-induced injuries are still elusive. Moreover, biochemical parameters that are clinically monitored to identify organ injury (e.g. creatinine for renal injury, aminotransferases for liver injury) have low sensitivity and specificity to early predict chemical-induced damage.
Metabolomics is a post-genomic technology that has been recognized as a powerful approach to characterize chemical-induced metabolic disturbances and to disclose the mechanisms underlying such changes. This explains the increasing applications of metabolomics in the toxicology field, not only in the context of adverse drug reactions but also of environmental toxicology. Metabolic fingerprints (signatures of toxicity) can constitute a useful tool to prevent adverse drug reactions encompassing precision medicine. Pathways of toxicity can be useful to identify therapeutic strategies to counteract and avoid drug adverse reactions. Finally, metabolomics can also provide a more accurate risk assessment approach of external environmental chemical exposures, thereby allowing efficient preventive regulatory actions. However, metabolomics faces several challenges that can limit their applications in toxicology. Those challenges deal with metabolite extraction, mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance methodologies, and very importantly, data preprocessing and data analysis approaches.
The aim of this Research Topic is to assemble review and original research articles on the applications of metabolomics in toxicology, including the identification of pathways and signatures of toxicity and the construction of metabolic fingerprints-driven databases from toxicants. Application of metabolomics as a predictive tool of toxicity, including pharmacometabolomics (pre-dose metabolic profile) are also welcome.
Suggested topics:
- Application of targeted and non-targeted metabolomics to assess chemical-induced toxicity in vitro and in vivo.
- Pharmacometabolomics.
- Metabolomics-driven toxicants databases.
- New approaches for the analysis of metabolomics data in toxicology.
Topic Editor Dr Alexandra Antunes is co-founder of Clarify Analytical. All other Topic Editors declare no competing interests with regards to the Research Topic subject.
Keywords: metabolic profiling, pathways of toxicity, signatures of toxicity, precision medicine
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
