Sapient Contributes to Groundbreaking Study on Human Liver Metabolism Published in Nature Metabolism

September 5, 2024—San Diego, CA—Sapient, a leading biomarker discovery organization providing at scale services for multi-omics data generation and analysis, has contributed to a groundbreaking study recently published in the prestigious Nature Metabolism journal which details an innovative approach for assaying metabolic activities in intact human liver tissue. Using global ¹³C isotope tracing, nontargeted mass spectrometry, and model-based metabolic flux analysis, the researchers – including Sapient’s own Dr. Mo Jain and key scientific collaborator Dr. Roland Nilsson – were able to perform in-depth measurement of human liver metabolism ex vivo. The approach preserves the full complement of liver cell types in their natural microenvironment, which can be assayed with great depth and resolution in an experimentally tractable system.

“Measuring metabolism in humans in vivo has been notoriously difficult, particularly when it comes to assaying metabolic fluxes in the liver,” said Dr. Nilsson. “Much of our current knowledge is based on animal or cell culture models, but human metabolism differs markedly from rodents, and therefore direct measure of human liver metabolism is still crucial for translating findings from early studies. Through our ex vivo approaches, we show that intact human liver tissue cultures can be an excellent choice for in-depth analysis of human liver metabolism and for translating metabolism research from model organisms to humans.”

“The data demonstrates that human liver tissue cultured ex vivo retains many of the metabolic and physiological characteristics of the human liver in vivo, allowing for deep study of metabolic pathways as well as for precise experimental manipulation to compare pre- and post-drug states, for example,” added Dr. Jain. “The ability to assay metabolic activities in intact human liver tissue has significant implications for identifying potential hepatic drug toxicities, studying gene editing within the liver, as well as for understanding primary liver diseases, including metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.”

Sapient made important contributions to the study by providing nontargeted mass spectrometry services to support the comprehensive metabolic profiling conducted. “We are proud to collaborate with such an impressive group of researchers in this landmark study and on an approach that will further advance understanding of human liver metabolism and the liver’s role in metabolic disease,” said Dr. Jain. “We were also able to demonstrate the power of discovery mass spectrometry to enable large-scale, comprehensive analysis of human metabolism to identify novel metabolites and pathways which may be key to advancing pharmaceutical development.”

The full paper, entitled “Global ¹³C tracing and metabolic flux analysis of intact human liver tissue ex vivo”, can be accessed here.

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About Sapient

Sapient is a leading biomarker discovery organization providing bespoke, at scale multi-omics services for proteomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics data generation and analysis, enabling biopharma sponsors to go beyond the genome to accelerate precision drug development. Using state-of-the-art, high-throughput mass spectrometry technologies, Sapient enables nontargeted multi-omics measurements to capture thousands of dynamic biomarkers in human, preclinical, and cellular biosamples, across thousands of samples at a time.

These technologies are leveraged within a larger discovery infrastructure that includes a comprehensive biocomputational framework for analysis of large-scale, multi-omics data; robust quality control analysis; and mapping of key biomarker-phenotype associations. Sapient can cross-validate discoveries using our proprietary in-house longitudinal Human Biology Database that includes data from over 100,000 human biosamples with paired phenotypic measures. Together our approaches enable rapid identification of drug targets and discovery, validation, and translation of dynamic biomarkers of biological processes, disease mechanisms, and drug response across all drug development phases. For more information, visit sapient.bio.

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