Metabolon to Power Metabolomic Enriched Population Health Studies at FinnGen

MUNICH and MORRISVILLE, N.C., Jan. 25, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Metabolon Inc., through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Metabolon GmbH, announces a multi-year collaboration with the FinnGen study in Finland to provide metabolomics data for population health studies to improve understanding of human health. 

"We are very excited to enter into this collaboration with FinnGen that will create unique scientific and clinical insights from the metabolomic data," says Michael Rasche, President & General Manager, International Business, Metabolon. "Our industry-leading metabolomics capabilities provide longitudinal large-cohort studies with metabolomic expertise, datasets, and interpretation."

As a leading biobank research project based in Finland, FinnGen will incorporate deep metabolomic datasets to better understand how genetic drivers of disease may impact biological function and influence disease progression. The world-class initiative has already identified over 400 new disease-associated variants enriched in the Finnish population. These findings provide the potential for further functional studies and new insight in disease mechanisms. FinnGen's collaboration with Metabolon enables this by adding deep metabolomics data generated from a subset of study participants who carry some of these medically interesting genetic variants.

"One of the key interests in FinnGen is to understand biological consequences of genetic disease associated variants that are enriched in the Finnish population. Metabolomic analyses have the potential to provide important insight to this aim," says Professor Aarno Palotie, FinnGen Scientific Director from the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), University of Helsinki.

Metabolon's proprietary global metabolomics platform is optimized to detect and identify 5,400+ metabolites across 70 major biochemical pathways for a wide array of samples such as plasma, urine, and tissues. Large-scale scientific research studies with this depth and breadth of global metabolomic data can draw new understanding and insights from their current clinical and multi-omic datasets.

"FinnGen is an incredible genomic initiative that will now add deep metabolomic datasets to enrich their current genomic and clinical datasets," says Dr. Karl Quinn, Director of Population Health, International Business, Metabolon. "These combined datasets enable academic and pharma researchers to better understand disease and conduct multi-omic analyses to develop new biomarkers, diagnostic tools, and novel therapeutics."

Coordination for FinnGen is provided by the University of Helsinki's Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM). Since 2017 research collaborations around the world have published peer-reviewed papers on a wide variety of diseases including neurology (epilepsy, Alzheimer's, ischemic stroke), cardiology (atrial fibrillation, heart failure), endocrinology (type 2 diabetes, Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease), rheumatology (arthritis), respiratory (COVID-19), and various forms of cancer. Many of these studies have used advanced bioinformatics techniques to analyze casual relationships between organ functions, genome-wide meta-analysis, and have replicated findings using FinnGen and other world-class biobanks to benefit people on a global basis. See more on FinnGen's peer-review papers published to date.

Metabolon's metabolomics platform enables greater potential for improved patient stratification by disease severity to highlight key biological differences between groups, providing new or enhanced precision medicine treatments. These enriched datasets can support research into new biomarkers, disease diagnostics, and to develop new therapeutics. Learn how Metabolon helps researchers achieve fully integrated multi-omics.

FinnGen and Metabolon look forward to collaborating to generate new datasets and insights that will drive important discoveries to improve human health.

About FinnGen
The FinnGen study, launched in Finland in 2017, is a unique study that combines genome information with digital health care data. The FinnGen study plans to analyze up to 500,000 samples collected by a nation-wide network of Finnish biobanks. The project aims to improve human health through genetic research, and ultimately identify new therapeutic targets and diagnostics for treating numerous diseases. It produces near complete genome variant data from all the 500,000 participants using GWAS genotyping and imputation and will utilize the extensive longitudinal national health register data available on all Finns. FinnGen is an exceptionally broad academic-pharma partnership (see website below for the whole partner list), having considerable public funding support from Business Finland (former Tekes). University of Helsinki is the organisation responsible for the study. For more information, please visit http://www.finngen.fi/en and follow us on Twitter.

About Metabolomics
Metabolomics, the large-scale study of all small molecules in a biological system, is the only 'omics technology that provides a complete current-state functional readout of a biological system. Metabolomics helps researchers see beyond just the genetic variation of individuals, by capturing the combined impact of genetic as well as external factors, such as the effect of drugs, diet, lifestyle and the microbiome on human health. By measuring thousands of discrete chemical signals that form biological pathways in the body, metabolomics can reveal important biomarkers that can enable understanding of a drug's mechanism of action (MOA), pharmacodynamics, safety profile, and individual response to therapy.

About Metabolon
Metabolon, Inc., is the global leader in metabolomics, with a mission to deliver metabolomics data and insights that expand and accelerate the impact of life sciences research in all its applications. Over 20 years, 10,000+ projects, 2,000+ publications, and ISO 9001:2015 and CLIA certifications, Metabolon has developed industry-leading scientific technology and bioinformatics techniques. Our Precision Metabolomics™ Platform has enabled the development of the world's largest proprietary metabolomics reference library. Our industry-leading data and translational science experts help our clients address some of the most challenging and pressing questions in the life sciences, accelerating research, and development success. The company offers scalable, customizable metabolomics solutions from discovery through clinical trials and product life-cycle management. For more information, please visit www.metabolon.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

SOURCE Metabolon, Inc.