When you need glasses, an optician doesn’t just give you a standard prescription. They test your eyesight and prescribe lenses suited to your individual needs. It’s a simple example of personalisation that we’ve accepted for decades.
Yet when it comes to medicines, a more standardised approach is still common. Two people with the same condition may receive the same medication but respond very differently. One might see significant improvements, while another experiences little benefit or even unwanted side effects.
This variability is a major challenge in drug development. What if researchers could better predict how someone might respond to a treatment before they receive it?
Where does metabolomics come in?
Metabolomics involves studying small molecules, known as metabolites, in biological samples. By analysing these molecules, researchers can learn more about the body’s metabolic activity, changes associated with disease and how individuals respond to medicines.
Unlike a person’s inherited genetic information, which remains relatively stable, their metabolic profile can change in response to factors such as diet, lifestyle, disease and medication. This makes metabolomics particularly useful for investigating what’s happening in the body at a given time.
For drug developers, this information could help explain why a treatment works for some patients but not others or provide insights into why promising medicines don’t always produce the expected results in clinical trials.
It could also help identify biomarkers associated with treatment response, allowing researchers to better understand which patients might benefit from different treatments.
What could this mean for clinical trials?
One of the most promising applications of metabolomics is patient stratification, which involves identifying groups of patients who may respond differently to a particular treatment.
Rather than grouping participants based on their diagnosis alone, researchers could use metabolic information alongside other clinical data to better understand the differences between them. With sufficiently validated biomarkers, this could help identify suitable participants for clinical trials, provide a clearer picture of treatment effectiveness and potentially reduce unnecessary exposure to treatments unlikely to benefit certain patients.
Metabolomics could also help researchers investigate unsuccessful trials. A treatment that doesn’t demonstrate effectiveness across a broad population might still show signs of benefit in a particular subgroup. Although these findings would need to be confirmed through further studies, understanding the differences between patients could help inform future research.
Ahead of this article, we asked our LinkedIn audience where they thought personalised medicine could have the biggest impact on clinical trials. Of the 10 people who responded, 70% selected identifying patient subgroups, while the remaining three options – predicting treatment response, understanding trial failures and improving dose selection – were tied at 10% each. The results give an interesting indication of where people see the greatest potential for personalised medicine in clinical trials.
Understanding these differences in treatment response depends, in part, on what researchers can learn from biological samples.
At MAC, our in-house Laboratory Services support drug development through bioanalytical testing, metabolite identification, biomarker analysis and pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic analyses. These services help researchers better understand how medicines behave in the body and support decisions throughout drug development.
Learn more about MAC’s metabolomics capabilities.
A more personalised future?
There are still challenges to overcome before metabolomics can be widely used to guide treatment decisions. Analysing metabolic data is complex, and researchers need to establish how reliably these findings can predict individual responses to medicines.
But the potential is significant. If researchers can better understand why patients respond differently to the same treatment, it could change how medicines are developed, tested and ultimately prescribed.
We already accept that something as simple as a pair of glasses needs to be tailored to the individual. Could a more personalised approach to medicines eventually become just as commonplace?
For enquiries about how MAC’s Laboratory Services, including metabolomics, could support your research, contact our team.
