Dear fellow scientists,

We hope you can look back to the year 2022 with satisfaction and success! At the UC Davis West Coast Metabolomics Center, we were happy to have welcomed 8 female speakers to our 10 invited seminar lectures, showcasing the leadership of women in metabolomics. See below for details and visit our YouTube channel for webinars you had missed!

In 2022, we trained 349 participants in our suite of metabolomics courses, from the 'Bits & Bites' hands-on web-based training units to the in-depth 1-week and 2-week courses. We are extending these courses for this year with new units, including training on ‘mass spectrometry imaging’ and a unit on ‘metabolomics for epidemiologists’ while keeping the popular sessions on MetaboAnalyst and GNPS. Check out our course contents!

Our Center's research activities in compound identification had a focus on predicting mass spectra using quantum chemistry molecular dynamics, with three papers on this topic (PMIDs 35006668, 35050190, 36107950). We also benchmarked CFM-ID performance, validated the use of plasma separator cards against the use of dried bloodspots in lipidomics, and revealed the mechanisms of metabolic changes in lungs that contribute to asthmatic phenotypes (PMIDs 36043939, 36316462, 36331340). We established a new MS/MS resource of almost 11,000 accurate mass spectra of acyl-CoA intermediates and found that p73α1 inhibits cancer cell viability through direct transcriptional suppression of stearoyl-CoA desaturase-1 (PMIDs 36010592, 35119811). Furthermore, we led or contributed to research for 25 additional papers. Congratulations to all authors for 2022! We are also grateful to receive an NIH R03 award to integrate metagenomics data into accurate mass metabolite identifications in stool, and to participate in a recent Keck foundation grant awarded to Prof. David Olson at UC Davis on research on psychedelic endorphins. At several conferences, we highlighted our research on microbial metabolism as well as the use of our new LC-BinBase automatic data processing system. These methods were crucial to perform large-scale human cohort studies for three cohorts, the Longevity Consortium cohorts, the T1D cohorts, and the Acute-to-Chronic Pain cohorts. All human cohort studies were performed in our ThermoFisher Center of Excellence in Clinical Metabolomics on the UC Davis Sacramento campus.

Contact us! We look forward to working with you in 2023.

With best wishes for the New Year,

Oliver Fiehn, PhD

Director WCMC