News & Events

Congrats to Ana who was featured in the Metabolomics Society Newsletter (MetaboNews)! 

Congratulations to Dr. Britz who recently won the Thyroid Foundation of Canada Award! This is a great accomplishment!

https://www.endo-metab.ca/awards-grants/thyroid-foundation-of-canada-awards/

The Britz Lab celebrated the end of the year and the rapid approach of the Holiday season with a well-deserved sushi lunch. Cheers to a productive year!

Congrats to Ana on receiving the Chemical Biology Inclusive Excellence Scholarship! This is a wonderful achievement!

Congrats to Zaineb for receiving a McMaster Institute for Research on Aging (MIRA) Graduate Student Professional Development Award (GSPDA)! 

Check out the link here to read more! 

https://mira.mcmaster.ca/news-events/fall-2025-graduate-student-professional-development-awards-gspda-recipients/

Congratulations to our very own Zach Kroezen who has won a TA award for the 2024-2025 academic year! Your students were so lucky to have you as their TA!

Zaineb has presented her work at MSACL - Mass Spectrometry and Advances in the Clinical Lab!

Zach and Dr. Britz, had the amazing opportunity to attend MANA 2025 in beautiful Banff, Alberta this past week. Zach presented a poster titled "Plasma metabolomics for the early detection of metabolic syndrome in high-risk overweight Mexican children"!

Congrats to Zach who was featured in the Metabolomics Society Newsletter (MetaboNews)! Check out his MetaboInterview here!

https://metabolomicssociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/MetaboNews_Aug2025.pdf

The Britz Lab dedicated a day for some team building exercises at Treetop Trecking in Hamilton!

Claire is completing her summer internship as part of the CREATE program at SCIEX. Here she is working on the LC-Xeno 7600 QToF system!

Some members were available for a group outing to go on a hike and blueberry picking. It's always a pleasure showing international students the best hiking spots in Hamilton!

Congrats to Ana who recently presented her research during an oral presentation at CSC in Ottawa. Hopefully you were able to check it out!!

Congrats to Ana on her 2nd talk at CSC 2025 where she presented her work on the impact of statistical analysis tutorial videos on student performance grades on lab reports. 

Celebrating Momo's arrival and Claire starting her internship at SCIEX this summer!

Check out our most recent press release that discusses our most recent vitamin D work and some general recommendations related to vitamin D testing and supplementation. 

https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/here-comes-the-sun-britz-mckibbin-on-what-you-need-to-know-about-vitamin-d/

We are so excited to be welcoming a visiting MSc. student from Japan, Momo Sato! She is from the Institute for Advanced Biosciences at Keio University in Tsuruoka, Japan and will be evaluating a new low-flow/sheathless CE-MS interface for metabolomic analyses. We are so excited to have her join our group for the next few months! 

Congratulations to our graduate student Claire on winning third place for her presentation at Research Colloquium Day!

Congratulations to Ana and Zach for winning first place awards for their poster and oral presentation at the 6th annual Canadian Metabolomics Conference in Montreal! 

Congratulations to our MSc. student Ana who has won the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Leadership Award. This award recognizes her research contributions, collaborations, TA-ing and helping out undergraduate students in our lab. Congratulations Ana!

A huge congratulations to Malina who won 2nd place at this year's undergraduate thesis presentation day for the Analytical session! It has been great getting to collaborate with you and we can't wait to see all you accomplish moving forward! Great research!!!

Congratulations to our undergraduate students Caitlyn, Malina and Zach on presenting their undergraduate theses! Congratulations to Zoe on presenting her 3rd year project on iSci presentation day! 

Congratulations to MSc. student Liam Surry who will be heading off for an exchange this summer at the Institute for Advanced Biosciences at Keio University in Tsuruoka Japan. 

Dr. Britz-McKibbin recently gave an interview for Metabonews that you can check out here! 

"A reflection on the evolution of metabolomics and innovations driving large-scale population health research”

http://www.metabonews.ca/Mar2025/MetaboNews_Mar2025.pdf

After obtaining her MSc. in Chemistry in our lab, Patricia has decided to rejoin our group, this time as a Research Assistant! We're so excited to have her back!

McMaster researchers have identified small molecules in the blood that may impact early childhood development, showing how dietary exposures, early life experiences and gut health can influence a child’s growth and cognitive milestones.

Dr. Britz-McKibbin's team collaborated with Brazilian scientists to conduct an untargeted metabolomic analysis of blood samples taken from more than 5,000 children between the ages of six months and five years as part of the Brazilian National Survey of Child Nutrition study.

Check out the full article here:

https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/researchers-uncover-molecules-that-may-influence-early-childhood-development/

Dr. Britz-McKibbin was featured in a CBC article where he discussed iodine deficiency and its impact on cognition and development. This news article resulted in a series of CBC radio interviews across 13 local stations in Canada. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/iodine-deficiency-second-opinion-1.7459781

Our two graduate students Ana and Claire had the opportunity to write a review paper for the Annual Review of Chemistry Journal. Check it out here!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39929542/

"Exposomics refers to the comprehensive analysis of environmental exposures over the lifespan and assessment of their biological effects on human health. This new frontier in environmental research promises new insights for assessment of the hazards of complex chemical exposures as compared to targeted biomonitoring of a limited panel of known toxicant(s). Metabolomics plays a pivotal role in expanding exposomic initiatives that require orthogonal separation methods coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry while using minimally invasive specimens from prospective cohort studies that can capture early life exposures. In this review, we outline new advances in metabolomic technologies for exposomics research over the past five years that are urgently needed to guide regulatory policies via better exposure mitigation and strategies to improve metabolic resilience."

Got to try on some funky glasses as we enjoy the last few days before the holidays!

We are please to announce the publication of our newest paper! Congratulations Erick! Check it out here!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39729551/

"We introduce PeakMeister as a new software tool in the R statistical environment to enable standardized processing of serum metabolomic data acquired by multisegment injection-capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (MSI-CE-MS), a high-throughput separation platform (<4 min/sample) which takes advantage of a serial injection format of 13 samples within a single analytical run. We performed a rigorous validation of PeakMeister by analyzing 47 cationic metabolites consistently measured in 5,000 serum and 420 quality control samples from the Brazilian National Survey on Child Nutrition (ENANI-2019) comprising a total of 224,983 metabolite peaks acquired in 40 days across three batches over an eight-month period."