Application of metabolomics in clinical and laboratory gastrointestinal oncology

Figure 1 The basic workflow of metabolomics. Samples aiming at different purposes are first collected. The applicable specimen types include blood, biopsy, biofluid, cell, and urine samples. Some specimens must be preprocessed before they are analyzed with various equipment. The manipulations include metabolite extraction, condensation, or derivatization as possible. The metabolomics data are usually collected with the corresponding software equipped with the instruments. Some software also provides data pre-procession (e.g., to remove noise signals) and statistical analysis functions. The differential metabolites are first screened out by statistical methods. These selected metabolites should be verified using another set of samples if possible. It is better to ascertain the concentration changes of each metabolite using a robust quantitation method.