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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Apr 28.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Metabolomics. 2013;1(3):227–240. doi: 10.2174/2213235X113019990005

Table 3.

Some of the Challenges Faced in Biomarker Discovery and Translation in Metabolomics

Major Steps Major Challenge
Biomarker Discovery

  1. High inter-laboratory variations due to differences in sample collection, processing and analysis protocols used by different research groups as there are no single, universally accepted procedure for metabolic profiling.

  2. Unknown metabolite identification.
Pre-validation

  1. Confounding effects induced by biological variations of individuals recruited for metabolomics studies.

  2. Collection of samples that truly represent patient populations.
Development High costs of or inaccessibility to isotope labeled analogues for accurate metabolite quantitation using mass spectrometry.
Validation Limited access to large and independent sample cohorts.
Commercialization

  1. High costs and slow adoption by medical community.

  2. Establishment of a strong biological connection to the derived biomarkers.