In January 2023, a research group led by Michael Snyder, PhD, at Stanford Medicine in California published a paper in Nature Biomedical Engineering on their multi-omics research approach, including combined data from blood microsamples and wearables.
The paper, titled “Multi-omics microsampling for the profiling of lifestyle-associated changes in health,” demonstrated the huge potential of obtaining useful multi-omics data from just two 10 µL Mitra® microsamples per sampling point, negating the need for phlebotomy in such studies.
The research was a success and the authors concluded that microsampling in omics studies “offers a promising opportunity to integrate with wearable data to improve precision healthcare.”
The pace of science and technology is moving at an incredible rate. Indeed, it is thought that our lives will be transformed over the next decade or so to the same degree that the industrial and internet revolutions impacted lives in past generations.
This transformation is primarily a result of the rise of big data and artificial intelligence influencing every element of our lives.
As a result, we are going to see huge developments in many fields, including biology, medicine, engineering, and clinical testing. Big data and the amazing progress in analytical technologies are going to allow us to personalize and modernize clinical tests to allow us to keep pace with the rapid progress in personalized treatments, such as CAR T therapy and other major medical breakthroughs.
In the coming years, there is a desire to transition away from traditional blood tests using multiple tubes of wet blood. Traditional blood tests often measure single analytes or small panels of molecules referenced against population values to help diagnose and/or monitor disease.
Instead, it is hoped that clinical science will transition towards longitudinal tests and preventive and personalized medicine, where data will be collected from the “multi-ome” of an individual throughout their lives. An individual’s multi-ome will provide a framework for understanding their ‘well state’ baseline health compared to indicators of disease or conditions that impact their health status.
Over the course of a person’s life, it is anticipated that any perturbations in biological markers will be caught early with this approach, which would allow for early intervention and prevention of disease onset.
There are, of course, barriers to adoption of such advanced or “disruptive” technologies. For example, the need for vast computing power and data storage to deploy longitudinal multi-omics surveillance to serve a wider population.
A benefit to consider, though, is the increased convenience and cost savings to be realized if people can reduce the number of regular visits they make to clinics and labs for blood tests. For people who are being monitored for chronic diseases, those visits are typically quite frequent and may also involve overnight stays.
By moving blood sample collection from the clinic or lab and into a person's home via self-sampling devices and kits, we can increase convenience and allow for more frequent sample collection.
Some remote studies have been those utilizing proteomic, metabolomic and lipidomic approaches. These studies demonstrate that it is possible to obtain multi-omics data from microsamples of dried capillary blood.
The work by Michael Snyder’s group is the focus of this blog, which is part 1 of 2 blogs in which we will delve into their approach and methodology used to validate their multi-omics method.
In part 2, we will summarize two studies reported in the research paper by the Snyder Lab, discussing the utility and potential of combining multi-omics data with capillary sample collection, and combining this with data obtained from wearables.
The Snyder Lab research group commented in their paper that traditional blood collection via venipuncture draws too high a blood volume for the frequent collection needed for longitudinal tests. They pointed out that, in some cases, several collection events may need to be conducted during the course of a single day, making venipuncture a challenge.
In relation to capillary microsampling approaches as an alternative, the authors also pointed out the limitations of conventional dried blood spot (DBS) cards. They noted that DBS cards often result in inconsistent sampling, stating “DBS sampling is often irreproducible since volumetric amounts can vary considerably and, so far, the number of analytes analyzed from DBS has generally been modest.”
For these reasons, the group chose to use Mitra devices with VAMS technology, due to their volumetric nature and precision, which helped them to circumvent issues experienced with the legacy technique (DBS).
Sample preparation from Mitra microsamples included different steps and experiments, as follows:
Experiments included:
To learn more about the application of VAMS Microsampling in Omics research please visit our resource page.
This article was summarized for our readers by James Rudge, PhD, Neoteryx Technical Director. This is curated content. To learn more about the important research outlined in this blog, visit the original article in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Access published, peer-reviewed papers on similar microsampling research studies in our Technical Resource Library.
Image credits: iStock, Trajan Scientific and Medical