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News|Articles|July 2, 2026

ASMS 2026: Yifan Liu and Where Metabolomics Is Headed in the Next 10 Years

Key Takeaways

  • Metabolomics is projected to broaden into more systems and increasingly support metabolite identification in human health and disease contexts.
  • Protein biomarkers may be less directly connected to metabolic processes driving cell function, making metabolites more proximal indicators of metabolic health.
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In the final installment of this four-part series, Yifan Liu of Northeastern University (Boston, MA) forecasts where metabolomics will be headed in the next ten years.

LCGC International spoke to Yifan Liu of Northeastern University (Boston, MA) regarding her presentation, Low-Temperature HILIC Provides Enhanced Separations and Stability for LC–MS-Based Metabolomics.

Here, Liu forecasts where metabolomics will be headed in the next ten years..

“I anticipate metabolomics in ten years will be applied across more systems, including metabolite identification for both health and disease in humans. I think this is important because, right now, proteins are less directly related to the metabolic processes that drive cell function, which makes protein biomarkers somewhat removed from metabolic health. To address that, I anticipate improvements in metabolite coverage from new technologies like our enhanced method, LT-ZIC-HILIC, combined with bioinformatics approaches. As for single-cell metabolomics, I think HILIC has a serious drawback, since it is very difficult to run at the nanoflow rates that single-cell work requires. So for now, I think LT-ZIC-HILIC is better suited to bulk metabolomics, but I don’t know — maybe in the future it could have a role there, too.”

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