[Use of translational medicine in the early diagnosis of xenobiotic-induced intrauterine growth retardation].

Translational medicine is an emerging idea in current medical research area. Typically, for the purpose of bridging the gap between basic and clinical research, it not only emphasizes the urgency and necessity to break the traditional working formats, including single subject centered research team and limited cooperation among different scientific groups, but also highlights a more close and frequent interaction between basic scientist and clinician. In order to reach this goal, the theory and method of systems biology should be employed. This paper mainly focused on a central issue that how to carry out an investigation on early clinical diagnosis of xenobiotic-induced intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) by using research concept of translational medicine and method of systems biology. Briefly, a hypothesis of common mechanism of IUGR was first proposed and subsequent validation was performed via integrating--omics (e.g. genomics, proteomics, cytomics, metabonomics/metabolomics) and molecular biology techniques. Metabonomics was further utilized to explore IUGR biomarker and establish preliminary forecasting model by bioinformatics and computational biology, which is available for early diagnosis of IUGR and make a complement to current evaluation criteria.