Into the growing field of “metabolomics” – the new medical diagnostic science being developed thanks to the understanding of unique chemical fingerprints in bio-fluids – comes a new application.
University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine professor and researcher Dr. Darryl Adamko is using metabolomics to come up with a new, accurate, non-invasive method to diagnose and classify types and severity of asthma and other chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases.
 At present, there is no reliable non-invasive means to tell exactly what kind of asthma or pulmonary disease an individual might be suffering from.
Respirlyte, a company formed by Dr. Adamko and the University of Alberta (with business assistance from TEC Edmonton) has now been incorporated to bring this patented method of identifying asthma and other respiratory diseases to market.
 Through TEC Edmonton, Respirlyte has received $60,000 in research funding from AllerGen, a Canadian National Centre of  Excellence (NCE) program to treat, prevent and find cures for allergic and related immune diseases.
“We still have a long ways to go,” cautions Dr. Adamko, “another five years at least. It’s only in the last 10 years that the research tools have been developed and made available that do the sophisticated analysis, and can follow the analysis over time.”
But Dr. Adamko’s research is clearly heading down the path of identifying the exact metabolomic signatures in body fluids, i.e. urine, that will tell the asthma docs exactly what type of respiratory illness their patients are suffering from.