Current Concepts in Pharmacometabolomics, Biomarker Discovery, and Precision Medicine

Pharmacometabolomics (PMx) studies use information contained in metabolic profiles (or metabolome) to inform about how a subject will respond to drug treatment. Genome, gut microbiome, sex, nutrition, age, stress, health status, and other factors can impact the metabolic profile of an individual. Some of these factors are known to influence the individual response to pharmaceutical compounds. An individual’s metabolic profile has been referred to as his or her “metabotype.” As such, metabolomic profiles obtained prior to, during, or after drug treatment could provide insights about drug mechanism of action and variation of response to treatment. Furthermore, there are several types of PMx studies that are used to discover and inform patterns associated with varied drug responses (i.e., responders vs. non-responders; slow or fast metabolizers). The PMx efforts could simultaneously provide information related to an individual’s pharmacokinetic response during clinical trials and be used to predict patient response to drugs making pharmacometabolomic clinical research valuable for precision medicine. PMx biomarkers can also be discovered and validated during FDA clinical trials. Using biomarkers during medical development is described in US Law under the 21st Century Cures Act. Information on how to submit biomarkers to the FDA and their context of use is defined herein.