Studying for a PhD in Clinical Metabolomics

RICCARDO DI GUIDA: During my Master, I started being interested in lipidomics. It started as a side project of metabolic relevance and drug discovery, but it appeared to be a really interesting field. I wanted to expand my knowledge about the topic. And I found out about a research group in Birmingham that was exploring metabolomics, which basically is the largest area of omics.

It’s comprehensive of the lipodomics area, so I just came here and I thought the PhD was a good opportunity to expand my knowledge in that sense.

So my main focus is in clinical metabolomics. So let’s say that my interest is on the effects of glucocorticoids on humans. So we have some collaborations with the hospital. And a lot of studies on humans then follow here at the mass spec facility, where we analyse human samples that can be plasma, serum, urine, adipose tissue, the other thing. And then we try to find out which are the tissue specific modifications that occur following some external input, and how of the metabolome reflects a change in the phenotype.

Metabolomics is a quite comprehensive subject. It really gives you a board idea about what’s going on in different living systems at a certain point in time. So knowing what is going on into the metabolome, so what is changing, why it is changing, how that relates with protein modifications, and genomics modification. That would give you actually a clear idea on what is going on, and why a disease may occur in some way, or why some cures should be fine towards some directions and why not?