Metabolomics is a science of studying the the types, quantities and changes of endogenous metabolites in organisms using high-sensitivity and high-precision modern analytical techniques. It is an important part of systems biology and one of the current research hotspots in the field of histology. Metabolism is at the end of the regulation of life activities, so metabolomics is closer to phenotype than genomics and proteomics. As Bill Lasley, a scholar at the University of California, Davis, said: "genomics and proteomics tell you what might happen, while metabonomics tells you what did happen". With the proposal and rapid development of the concept of precision medicine, metabolomics is gradually becoming one of the main effective tools to achieve the goal of precision medicine. It is applied to new marker discovery, disease classification, individualized treatment, disease treatment process monitoring and prognosis assessment.

The Metabolomics Technology Platform will establish a series of new technologies and methods for metabolomics analysis that are leading in China, and establish an open metabolomics analysis technology platform for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and even the whole country, which will be applied to disease diagnosis, disease treatment and drug development. It supports the strategic layout of the National Precision Medicine and the International Human Phenotyping Project, and promotes the leap-forward development of the biomedicine and precision medicine industries in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

The platform layout includes multiple large-scale precision measurement systems including UHPLC-Q-TOF/MS and UHPLC-MS/MS, which can be used for high-coverage, ultra-sensitive qualitative and quantitative measurement of low-abundance metabolites.