RTI is expanding its reach in metabolomics through the formation of a new center that will make and provide metabolites to scientists researching research disease detection and identification.
Under a contract potentially worth $4.1 for up to five years, RTI scientists will form the Metabolite Standards Synthesis Center. The center will be led by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and is intended to increase the national capacity for metabolomics services to basic, translational and clinical investigators.
Metabolites are the products of the body’s metabolism. The field of metabolomics studies metabolites and the biochemical processes within cells and tissues. The project calls for RTI scientists to synthesize metabolites that are nominated by researchers and approved by a selection committee. These compounds will be provided to researchers for direct comparison to tissue samples being used to identify and detect diseases.
“With this project, we want to enable research that can contribute to earlier and reliable diagnosis and facilitate a better understanding of diseases,” Herbert Seltzman, a senior research scientist at RTI and the project’s director said in a statement. “Providing scientists with known, postulated, or isotopically labeled compounds that are otherwise unavailable to them could vastly improve the process of therapeutic intervention and drug development.”
The RTI contract to form the new metabolite center is funded through the National Institutes of Health Common Fund.
