Abstract
Biomarkers are advancing animal health and are increasingly used in livestock and companion animals. Biomarkers enable disease detection, prognosis, and monitoring of treatment efficacy, and provide the basis for interpretation of biological processes throughout animal development, as tools in robustness evaluation, and in fertility. Biomarker discovery in animals aims to identify measurable indicators of biological processes, disease, and traits by analyzing small molecules in biological samples such as blood, urine, or tissue.
The analytical instrumentation platform at SINTEF Industri in Trondheim includes instrumentation for LC-MS/MS, high resolution MS, GC-MS/MS, GC-FID, and ICP-MS, covering most aspects of organic and inorganic analysis. Using mass spectrometry (MS) in combination with liquid chromatography, we have developed methods for metabolomics and lipidomics analysis covering both targeted methods and non-targeted high- and ultrahigh resolution MS. We have also developed sample preparation approaches for complex biological samples, and utilised the combined method sets in biomarker discovery related to fertility, development and animal robustness. The talk will describe some of our approaches, and showcase the importance of and need for optimisation of sample preparation and chromatographic conditions in the analysis and discovery of biomarkers. Examples will be included projects related to animal health and fertility in important Norwegian production animals such as salmon, pig, and cattle.