On December 1st-13rd, 2016, Prof. Rainer Lehmann visited Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is Academic Director at the Central Laboratory, University Hospital Tuebingen, Germany and is a specialist in Clinical Chemistry and Pathobiochemistry. His responsibilities encompass managing the daily high throughput analyses of all kinds of clinical samples in the central laboratory (ca. 35,000 analyses per day), the development of new methods, as well as the investigation of pre-analytical aspects. In addition he is the head of the research group “functional metabo-lipidomics” at the Institute of Diabetes Research and Metabolic Diseases (IDM) of the Helmholtz Centre Munich at the University of Tuebingen (part of the German Center for Diabetes research, DZD).
During his stay at the DICP, Prof. Lehmann and researchers from the laboratory of high resolution/separation analysis and metabonomics (Group 1808) at the DICP comprehensively discussed achieved results of their cooperation, and defined specific arrangements for future work, including research plan, paper preparation and project application. In the morning of Dec.12nd, Prof. Lehmann gave a lecture entitled “Crucial factors affecting the outcome of clinical metabolomics studies”. This research was one of the joint projects in this fruitful Sino-German cooperation. Pre-analytical factors affecting the reliability of clinical metabolomics results were introduced in detail, the discovery and validation of a reliable biomarker for sample quality control was demonstrated. He also reported the difference between plasma and serum samples, and notable impact to metabolic profiling of spot urine from the diet the day before. These investigations provide a base for the establishment of standard operation procedures for clinical metabolomics study to improve the sample quality and consequently the outcome of clinical metabolomics investigations. Around 40 staffs and students attended his great lecture.
University of Tuebingen is one of the 11 elite universities (Excellence initiative) in Germany supported in 2012-2017. Its medical college consists of 17 hospitals, 14 research centers and 16 research institutes. Medical research is mainly concentrated in neuroscience, diabetes, immunology, cancer and infectious diseases, these four research directions are components of the German national medical research center.
Two research teams coordinated by Prof. Rainer Lehmann and Prof. XU Guowang, respectively, have been working together since 2008. The two sides combined their respective advantages in the field of medical sciences and pathobiochemistry and analytical chemistry successfully, supported in part by the Sino-German Center. A whole series of research results in establishing standard operation procedures for clinical metabolomics study, on diabetes prevention and control, exercise studies (sports medicine), and development of new method for metabolomics study were jointly achieved. Since 2008, 27 joint papers have been published in international journals, including Clin. Chem., Diabetes Care, Diabetologia, Anal.Chem., Sci.Rep., J.Clin.Endocrinol.Metab. etc.
This visit of Prof. Lehmann will promote the cooperation between the two sides. (Text/LIU Xinyu and Imaged by Xiaoli Hou)