Lipidomic analysis of apoptotic hela cells induced by Paclitaxel

Apoptosis has been shown to be accompanied by changes in cellular phospholipids. In this study, lipidomic strategy was applied to investigate the early changes in Hela cell phospholipid metabolism in response to paclitaxel-induced apoptosis. A total of 240 phospholipid species were profiled and 202 of them were quantified using the NPLC-ESI/MS(n) procedure. Principal component analysis and partial least squares combined with variable influence on projection were applied to find the potential biomarkers for discrimination between the control and paclitaxel-treated cells. Lysophosphatidylethanolamine and lysophosphatidylcholine species with strong decreasing trends after 6 h of treatment were identified as possible biomarkers for discrimination, which could be backed up by the decreased expression of cPLA(2). In addition, some of phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylinositol, and phosphatidylcholine species with unsaturated fatty acid chains and phosphatidic acid species with saturated fatty acid chains were also indentified as potential biomarkers, and their changes might be closely related to the alteration of cell membrane fluidity happened in apoptotic process. These results showed clearly that phospholipids and related phospholipases played important roles in paclitaxel-induced apoptosis in Hela cells. Our study also demonstrates that lipidomics provide a powerful tool for better understanding anticancer mechanisms of chemotherapeutic agents and for biomarker screening.