Swedish Metabolomics Centre

Swedish Metabolomics Centre (SMC) in Umeå (SLU; UmU) was launched 2013 via an infrastructure grant from Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The original infrastructure included collaboration with Chalmers for setting up metabolic modelling. The aim of the centre has from the beginning been to support researchers at Swedish Universities with mass spectrometry based small molecule, lipid, and metabolomics analysis in all types of biological tissues and fluids. Since 2016 SMC, including Chalmers, is a part of SciLifeLab and since 2021 in the frame of SciLifeLab, SMC and Chalmers Mass Spectrometry Infrastructure (CMSI) in Gothenburg has initiated closer interactions. The metabolomics unit at CMSI has a focus on large-scale metabolomics projects and computational metabolomics. The two metabolomics units at SciLifeLab strives to be a leading knowledge centre in metabolomics and small molecule analysis, both nationally and internationally.

Services

The Swedish Metabolomics Centre helps researchers to answer their questions by providing tailor-made metabolite and lipid analyses. SMC offers all analytical steps from sample preparation to data processing, for both untargeted and targeted analysis of low molecular weight compounds. 

We offer four different products:

• Untargeted methods (metabolomics and lipidomics screening)
• Targeted methods (i.e. amino acids, sugars, fatty acids, etc)
• Method development
• Open Access (i.e. you use our instruments to do the analysis yourself). 

There is always a meeting between SMC and the customer, either in person or over Zoom. In the meeting we explain our services, discuss your project and together with you we choose which of our services that will be the best fit for your project.

Applications

Metabolites are essential components in all living organisms. It is well known that disorders in metabolite patterns cause metabolic diseases that can have dramatic effects on the survival of the organism. Therefore, measuring metabolites is essential in today’s clinical chemistry. In addition to using metabolite profiles for screening of metabolic disorders (clinical chemistry applications), targeted or untargeted profiling of metabolites or lipids are necessary to understand fundamental biological processes.  Perturbations in metabolite patterns have been associated with metabolic diseases and other conditions that can have a dramatic effect on the organism. As metabolites can be considered as “end-points” and closer to the phenotype than other omics data, e.g. transcript or protein data, the metabolite data provides biochemical information that can be linked to particular phenotypes. These links can then be used to connect to gene-, protein- or other meta-data in explorations of targeted biological processes, or to identify biomarkers of both health conditions and environmental exposures.

Equipment

Mass spectrometers dedicated for metabolomic analyses

• Leco Pegasus BT, GCTOFMS
• Leco Pegasus HT, GCTOFMS
• Agilent 7000, GCQqQMSMS
• Agilent UHPLC-QqQMSMS 6495
• Agilent UHPLC-QqQMSMS, 6490 (2)
• Agilent 6546 iFunnel Accurate-Mass UHPLC-QTOFMSMS (2)
• Agilent 6560 Ion Mobility UHPLC-QTOFMSMS
  

• Agilent RapidFire
• Agilent Bravo
  

• Agilent 6550 UHPLC-qTOF (2)
• Waters Synapt-XS ion mobility-qTOF with Acquiry Premier UHPLC
• Waters Xevo-XS qTOF (REIMS and DESI available)
• Sciex UHPLC-QTRAP 6500+ (2)
• Waters TQS micro UHPLC-MS/MS
• Several HPLC and GC systems with MS and other detectors