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From Genomeweb

March 17, 2014

Agilent Joins Singapore-led Lipidomics Research Consortium

By a GenomeWeb staff reporter

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Agilent Technologies said today that it will take part in an international research consortium led by the National University of Singapore to develop the world's first lipid 1 database for healthy persons of different racial and ethnic groups.

The project aims to better identify baseline levels of healthy and unhealthy fats in people of various ethnic backgrounds, information that could aid in future development of diagnostic markers.

The consortium members, which in addition to NUS's Singapore Lipidomics Incubator (SLING) include South Korea's Graduate School of Analytical Science and Technology at Chungnam National University and the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, all use Agilent's 6490 triple quadrupole instrument in their lipid work, the company said in a statement.

In addition to generating the lipid data, the researchers also aim to integrate this data with glycomic and proteomic studies to better understand natural variation within the classes of molecules.

"Lipidomics has the potential to deliver significant new advances in medicine," Peter Meikle, head of metabolomics at Baker IDI, said in a statement. "However, to achieve these advances we must first understand the natural variation within different ethnic groups. We can then identify more accurately where abnormal lipid metabolism may be contributing to diseases including heart disease and diabetes."

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