Metabolomics for the diagnosis of infectious diseases

Summary: Although molecular testing demonstrates high test performance and represents the standard of care for diagnosis of several infectious diseases, diagnostic gaps remain including high cost, high complexity and inability to differentiate active infection from colonization. These limitations have surfaced actively in the application of respiratory virus testing. These viruses infect respiratory epithelial cells, where they may induce metabolite alterations in the host. There is significant interest in leveraging alternative approaches such as metabolomics (small molecules) and proteomics (proteins) to address remaining gaps. This presentation will provide an introduction to metabolomics testing, draw on the current evidence base of metabolomics for infectious diseases applications, and present early findings for the diagnosis of influenza and SARS-CoV-2 via untargeted and targeted metabolomics approaches. Bio: Dr. Catherine Hogan is a medical microbiologist and infectious diseases physician with a passion for innovative diagnostic methods. She completed post-doctoral training at Stanford University, where she developed and optimized diagnostic methods for infectious diseases. During this time, she led a multidisciplinary team that completed proof-of-concept work demonstrating the successful adaptation of a novel and universal metabolomics method combined with machine learning for infectious diseases diagnostics. She joined the BC Centre for Disease Control in February 2021, where she is now working on extending this research program.

BC CDC Presenters

11/1/2022 7:00:00 PM