Origins of metabolic profiling

Quantitative metabolic profiling originated as a 10-year project carried out between 1968 and 1978 in California. It was hypothesized and then demonstrated that quantitative analysis of a large number of metabolites - selected by analytical convenience and evaluated by computerized pattern recognition - could serve as a useful method for the quantitative measurement of human health. Using chromatographic and mass spectrometric methods to measure between 50 and 200 metabolites in more than 15,000 human specimens, statistically significant and diagnostically useful profiles for several human diseases and for other systematic variables including age, diet, fasting, sex, and other variables were demonstrated. It was also shown that genetically distinct metabolic profiles for each individual are present in both newborn infants and adults. In the course of this work, the many practical and conceptual problems involved in sampling, analysis, evaluation of results, and medical use of quantitative metabolic profiling were considered and, for the most part, solved. This article is an account of that research project.