Metabolomics in the fight against malaria

Metabolomics uses high-resolution mass spectrometry to provide a chemical fingerprintof thousands of metabolites present in cells, tissues or body fluids. Such metabolicphenotyping has been successfully used to study various biologic processes anddisease states. High-resolution metabolomics can shed new light on the intricacies ofhost-parasite interactions in each stage of the Plasmodium lifecycle and the downstream ramifications on the host’s metabolism, pathogenesis anddisease. Such data can become integrated with other large datasets generated usingtop-down systems biology approaches and be utilised by computational biologists todevelop and enhance models of malaria pathogenesis relevant for identifying new drugtargets or intervention strategies. Here, we focus on the promise of metabolomics tocomplement systems biology approaches in the quest for novel interventions in thefight against malaria. We introduce the Malaria Host-Pathogen Interaction Center(MaHPIC), a new systems biology research coalition. A primary goal of the MaHPIC isto generate systems biology datasets relating to human and non-human primate (NHP)malaria parasites and their hosts making these openly available from an onlinerelational database. Metabolomic data from NHP infections and clinical malariainfections from around the world will comprise a unique global resource.