Targeted lipidomics and drug abuse research

Contemporaneously with genomics and proteomics technologies, lipidomics may be recognized as the next important emerging technology. The emergence of this important area of “omics” could very well mark the beginning of “the decade of the lipids.” A workshop on lipidomics was held in Washington, DC, by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in April 2004. The goal of the workshop was to bring together scientists working at the frontier of lipid research, to discuss their findings in this area and to promote “lipidomics,” in general, but also with a special focus on its application to drug abuse research and development of therapies to treat addiction.