The potential of metabolic profiling for vaccine development

Recent technological advances have provided deeper insights into the role of small molecules in biological processes. Metabolic profiling has thus entered the arena of -omics studies and rapidly proven its value both as stand-alone and as complement to other more advanced approaches, notably transcriptomics. Here we describe the potential of metabolic profiling for vaccinology embedded in the context of infection and immunity. This discussion is preceded by a description of the relevant technical and analytical tools for biological interpretation of metabolic data. Although not as widely applied as other -omics technologies, we believe that metabolic profiling can make important contributions to the better understanding of mechanisms underlying vaccine-induced responses and their effects on the prevention of infection or disease.