Obesity is a serious health problem with an increased risk of several common diseases including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Metabolomics is an emerging analytical technique for systemic determination of metabolite profiles, which is useful for understanding the biochemical changes in obesity or related diseases both in individual organs and at the organism level. Increasingly, this technology has been applied to the study of obesity, complementing transcriptomics and/or proteomics analyses. Indeed, the alterations of metabolites in biofluids/tissues are direct indicators of variations in physiology or pathology. In this paper, we will examine the obesity-related alterations in significant metabolites that have been identified by metabolomics as well as their metabolic pathway associations. Issues concerning the screening of biologically significant metabolites related to obesity will also be discussed.

Background: To prepare sorafenib-loaded folate-decorated bovine serum nanoparticles (FA-SRF-BSANPs) and investigate their effect on the tumor targeting. Methods: The nanoparticles were characterized and evaluated by in vivo and in vitro experiments. Results: SRF-loaded BSA nanoparticles (SRF-BSANPs) was first prepared and modified with folic acid by chemical coupling to obtain FA-SRF-BSANPs. The average particle size, zeta potential, entrapment efficiency, and drug loading of the optimized FA-SRF-BSANPs were 158.00 nm, −16.27 mV, 77.25%, and 7.73%, respectively. The stability test showed that FA-SRF-BSANPs remained stable for more than 1 month at room temperature. The TEM analysis showed that the surface of FA-SRF-BSANPs was nearly spherical. XRD analysis showed that the drug existed in. the nanoparticles in an amorphous state. FA-SRF-BSANPs can promote the intracellular uptake of hepatoma cells (SMMC-7721) with the strongest inhibitory effect compared with SRF-BSANPs and sorafenib solution. Furthermore, the tumor targeting of FA-SRF-BSANPs (C_tumor/C_blood, 0.666 ± 0.053) was significantly higher than those of SRF-BSANPs (C_tumor/C_blood, 0.560 ± 0.083) and sorafenib-solution (C_tumor/C_blood, 0.410 ± 0.038) in nude mice with liver cancer. Conclusion: FA-modified albumin nanoparticles are good carriers for delivering SRF to the tumor tissue, which can improve the therapeutic effect and reduce the side effects of the drug.