Metabolomics is characterized as the qualitative and quantitative study of small molecular weight molecules (metabolites) present in a biological system/sample. Metabolomics can be used as a stand-alone platform and/ or as a part of broader omics analyses.

There are two main approaches used in metabolomics: the hypothesis-free untargeted approach, which offers a high potential for discovery of new metabolites/BIOMARKERS and the targeted approach, which focuses on accurate quantification of known metabolites/ BIOMARKERS.

The hypothesis-free untargeted approach has a great potential for discovery of novel biological processes and associations. Different metabolomics platforms can be applied to measure metabolites in the biological samples; however, over the last few years, due to technological progress, Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) based metabolomics has been increasingly acknowledged as the metabolomics platform of choice.