Sofia Moco

Sofia Moco is a chemical engineer (Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal) and a biochemist (PhD). Since her phD studies, she has been developing metabolomics approaches to study metabolism, through monitoring the dynamics of small molecules / nutrients / drugs / metabolites in various biological systems. She started by studying secondary metabolism in plants, using mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), during her phD studies at the Biochemistry Laboratory and the Plant Research International, Wageningen University and Research Center, the Netherlands.

She performed a 2-year post-doc at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, before joining Nestle Research, Lausanne, Switzerland. She became a Team leader and a Senior Scientist in Metabolomics in 2016. She set-up 2 new laboratories (3 MS and 3 600 MHz NMR) and she built a team to conduct metabolomics research in projects to improving metabolic conditions, such as diabetes, obesity, and ageing, with a particular focus on mitochondrial function and bioenergetics. 

Presentation

Studying dynamics of cellular metabolism by metabolomics

Abstract

Cellular metabolism is dynamic and time dependent. Bioactive compounds, such as pharmaceutical drugs, vitamins or phytochemicals, induce cellular metabolic changes. These metabolic alterations inform about the bioactive’s mechanism-of-action or their metabolic fate. The dynamics of metabolite concentrations and pathway turnover are then a proxy of cellular metabolic status.

In our lab, we use a combination of mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) metabolomics approaches to study metabolism, including central, redox, and xenobiotic metabolism in human mammalian cells. On one hand, NMR gathers several advantages in studying cellular metabolism: it allows screening many cellular metabolites in parallel, in a quantitative fashion, and it even allows monitoring kinetic changes over time. And on the other hand, MS allow us to focus on selected panel of metabolites and study them at high sensitivity.

These strategies – snapshot metabolomics and stable isotope ratio metabolomics - are then applied to study cellular biochemistry, such as stem cell diRerentiation, oxidative stress and drug metabolic fate, at the mechanistic level. These biochemical readouts, integrated with other functional readouts, contribute to understanding and developing pharmaceutical and therapeutic programs.