Metabolomics in Alcohol Research and Drug Development

Developers of new medications need to describe and predict the functional attributes of test compounds administered to cells, animals, and humans. Today, researchers increasingly appreciate the role that intermediary products (i.e., metabolites) generated in the course of various metabolic pathways play in both health and disease states and how their analysis can support development of new medications. Advances in analytical and computational techniques have facilitated the rise of new and powerful tools for measuring metabolic and biochemical pathways in such complex systems. Metabolomics—a systems biology approach to characterizing metabolites produced in biochemical pathways—is contributing to many studies of disease progression and treatment, although it has not yet been extensively applied in research on metabolic perturbations associated with alcohol abuse. However, numerous metabolomic approaches may contribute to alcohol-related research, as illustrated by studies on alcohol-related metabolic dysfunctions such as (1) alterations in fat metabolism and (2) thiamine deficiency. By further increasing the number and types of metabolites that can be measured in a given biological sample, metabolomic approaches may be able to help define the role of the many different metabolic pathways affected by alcohol abuse and support discovery and development of novel medications for the treatment of alcoholism and related conditions.