Reference and Test Material Working Group

Chairs: Clay Davis, National Institute of Standards and Technology and Baljit Ubhi, MOBILion Systems, Inc.

Ongoing activities:
The metabolomics community urgently needs reference and test materials that can be used for measurements across laboratories and data standardization from different instrumental platforms to ensure translation of biological discoveries. Accordingly, we are actively working to develop measurement designs and prototype materials that can be utilized across most, if not all, instrumentation platforms and employed for interlaboratory comparisons. Additionally, we are defining the measurement challenges that different types of reference and test materials have the potential to address, as well as establishing best use practices for test and reference materials.

Anticipated deliverables:

• A survey will be disseminated to more clearly define the test and reference material needs of the broader metabolomics community.

• A manuscript will follow that details the initial charge of the working group, and its current approach to enable the development of community-accessible reference and test materials for metabolomics.