Metabolon, Inc., a leader in metabolomics-driven biomarker discovery, announced today the launch of DiscoveryHD4™, the company's fourth-generation metabolomics platform. This new technology platform will empower the company's metabolomics TrueVision™, mVision™ and mView™ research and biomarker discovery offerings, as well as its diagnostic product development pipeline. Further extending Metabolon's leadership position in metabolomics research and diagnostics, this platform enables a more expansive and precise global biochemical coverage of metabolite markers across the entire metabolome, thus increasing the ability to discover novel biomarkers and research questions.
Two key innovations power the DiscoveryHD4™ platform advancements. First, accurate mass instrumentation coupled to our new software technology provides a profound increase in sensitivity, and leads to the detection of more metabolites with greater precision. Second adding a hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) method to the company's standard platform technology provides a more complete picture for metabolites within central carbon, or "energy," metabolism, among other advances. The novel software tools that Metabolon has pioneered leverages these technical advancements. Together with Metabolon's wealth of biochemistry expertise, these advancements are significant ingredients to Metabolon's leadership and success in metabolomics.
"This new technology platform advances the evolution of our metabolomics capabilities and intellectual property," said John Ryals, Ph.D, President and CEO of Metabolon. "These capabilities are a primary reason we are seeing more collaborations with large initiatives such as the one we recently announced with Craig Venter's new genomics initiative, Human Longevity Inc. There is growing recognition of the value metabolomics offers to empower genomics and connect genetics to the phenotype, or the living system's observable characteristics. Having a metabolomics technology platform with an industrialized capability and a capacity that can keep pace with the power of modern sequencing technologies is important to maintaining our position of industry leadership. The breadth of metabolome coverage that this new platform now provides enables more mechanistic insight into the basis of human health and disease."
"Our scientists are ecstatic about the enhanced resolving power that the DiscoveryHD4™ will deliver our clients across academia and the biotechnology industry. We are already leveraging the enhanced resolving power of the new platform to fuel our diagnostic biomarker discovery pipeline," commented Michael Milburn, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Metabolon. "Not only are we able to identify more metabolite markers than ever before, we have extended our capabilities to routinely measure additional classes such as steroids and energy metabolites. With these advancements, we can take a complex sample, such as blood, and rapidly identify and rigorously quality control up to 1,000 metabolites in a single biological sample, more than many have thought possible. Practically, this means our potential to discover more sensitive and specific biomarkers and understand what these signatures mean for the underlying biology is dramatically heightened."