Good things keep happening in the chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) world and not all of them are on the federal level. Private efforts emphasizing collaboration and working together are continuing to produce surprising results and make waves. The Open Medicine Foundation (OMF) is a good example of that. In just the last month it's packed on another $1,000,000 in private donations and that means a new study is underway.
The OMF's New Mitochondria Study
The size of OMF's success may be surprising, but the fact that it is a success isn't really. Put together a visionary program with top research talent the money is hopefully going to flow, and it has; $5 million dollars of it since 2012 with the vast majority of it coming recently.
This time $400,000 of it is flowing to the newest member of the team, mitochondrial expert Dr. Robert Naviaux. Dr. Naviaux's 100 person study will be looking in the smallest molecules in the body for the molecular roots of ME/CFS.
The really, really nice thing about the study is what came before it. This is not an exploratory study; that study - an 80 patient study using patients from Dr. Gordon's and Dr. Cheney's practices - has been done. Using a process called metabolomics that study (unpublished) found evidence of a unique chemical signature in ME/CFS patient's blood; a signature Dr. Naviaux hopes could provide a diagnostic biomarker, and spur the development of new "rational therapies" to treat ME/CFS.
Metabolomics
Metabolomics is one of the newer 'omics" (genomics, proteomics) which advances in molecular characterization and data mining are thrusting to the fore in medical research. Metabolomics measures the metabolites or small molecules a cell produces as it does its work. Generally defined as any molecule less than 1 kDa in size, these metabolites provide a snapshot of what’s happening in a cell.
Dr. Naviaux explains metabolism in terms of happens when our genetic heritage interacts with our environment. He uses the by-products or metabolites our cells produce to provide a new lens through which to “see” and understand the "inner world of the cell". He calls metabolomics “eavesdropping" on the collective conversations of the cells in the body".
The first metabolomics database was created eleven years ago just down the road from Dr. Naviaux at Scripps University in San Diego. In January 2007, the first draft of the human metabolome was completed at the
Human Metabolome Project (HMP) at the University of Alberta, Canada.
Mass Spectrometers
Alan Rockwood, Ph.D
The big gun metabolomics brings to the research field is the mass spectrometer. It's proponents believe that mass spectrometer's (MS's) ability to discriminate between different molecules and different forms of proteins, will open up a golden age in biomarker discovery. MS's can detect small modifications of proteins or the presence of very small molecules that other techniques cannot....
