Urinary metabonomic study of lung cancer by a fully automatic hyphenated hydrophilic interaction/RPLC-MS system

Lung cancer is one of the most common and lethal cancers in the world. In this study, a home-devised hydrophilic interaction chromatography/RPLC-MS (HILIC/RPLC-MS) system was developed to study the urinary metabonomics of lung cancer patients. This system combined the orthogonal selectivity of HILIC and RPLC and could chromatographically reveal more comprehensive information of the urinary metabolites. Within a total analysis time of 50 min, we detected 577 polar metabolite ions on the first HILIC column and 261 apolar ones on the second RPLC column. In addition, an orthogonal signal correction partial least-squares discriminant analysis model was constructed to characterize differences between health and lung cancer cases. Eleven potential biomarkers, ten from HILIC column and one from the second RP column, were identified and all of these biomarkers were found upregulated in lung cancer patients. Overall, the results indicated that the developed HILIC/RPLC-MS system is a promising tool for metabonomic studies in revealing more information of highly complex samples.