Metabolite Identification Fact Sheet

The goal of nontargeted metabolomic and lipidomic studies is to discover the most biologically important signals in a patient population, whether they are known molecules or yet to be chemically identified. Accurate metabolite identification is needed to maximize the impact of discovery metabolomics and lipidomics, to effectively map the role of key biomarkers identified in a study and support translation to clinical use.

To that end, Sapient has focused extensively on building metabolite identification analysis capabilities to enhance the speed, quality, and extent of metabolite identification. Our in-house standards library now encompasses >13,000 chemical reference standards, and is enriched for key human and preclinical metabolic pathways, biological processes and disease drivers. The library has strong representation across endogenous human metabolites and lipids as well as from FDA approved drugs.

All standards have been extensively analyzed using Sapient’s rapid liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (rLC-MS) systems, enabling definitive identifications of up to 1,400 metabolites in large-scale studies, with >1,000 metabolites routinely identified in small-scale studies. We have also collected >6 million MS2 spectra representing more than 850,000 compounds, which can be used for putative structural identification of unknown metabolites and lipids.