Metabolon has launched an integrated bioinformatics platform to aid metabolomics analysis in life sciences research.
The Morrisville, NC-based firm provides metabolomics solutions across a range of fields, including diagnostic and therapeutic development.
In a statement, Metabolon said that the new bioinformatics platform, announced at the recent Biomarkers U.K. conference in London, would alleviate much of the burden researchers face in time lost to manual data organization and preparation.
The platform would seamlessly integrate a suite of tools to help investigators and biochemists handle and interpret very large and complex data sets, with features including client data prepopulated and ready for analysis, publication-ready charts, plots, and data tables, Metabolon said.
“By combining our extensive industry experience with cutting-edge technology, we are empowering researchers to navigate complex data effortlessly and accelerate discoveries in the life sciences,” said Dr. Ray Moran, Metabolon’s senior director of bioinformatics.
Metabolon said that it has built a proprietary database of more than 5,400 biologically relevant metabolites.
The platform includes Metabolon’s Pathway Analysis, which allows researchers to index their metabolomics data on the company’s biochemical pathway maps to uncover how different biological processes operate, to give insights into disease mechanisms and therapeutic targets, for example.
It also includes Biomarker Lenses, a feature analyzing metabolomic data by focusing on metabolites associated with specific pathways and diseases.
Other platform tools include volcano plots to identify statistically significant changes in large datasets to reveal biologically relevant metabolites and principal component analysis (PCA), a linear transformation technique used in numerous applications including gene expression analysis and metabolomics studies.
