Metabolomics deals with the global assessment of the metabolites present in a biological system to evaluate the progress of the disease, select potential biomarkers, and provide insights into the underlying pathophysiology. As metabolomic analysis generates large quantities of data, multivariate data analysis techniques and chemometrics are often used to interpret experimental results. The present overreview describes various chemometric methods that are frequently used in clinical biomarker studies, with emphasis on data analysis strategies and validation of classification and prognostic models. Moreover, an overview of most interesting recent biomarker discovery publications is provided to highlight the clinical applications of chemometric techniques used for bioanalytical data interpretation.
Keywords: biomarker; chemometrics; clinical research; metabolomics; multivariate methods.
© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.