Distinct metabolic differences between various human cancer and primary cells

Recent years have seen resurging interest in cancer cell metabolism and the role of secreted cancer metabolites in modulating the tumor stroma. Using a combination of nontargeted and targeted LC and GC-MS methods, the exometabolomes of three leukemia, two melanoma, three renal cell carcinoma, two colorectal adenocarcinoma, four hepatocellular carcinoma, three breast cancer, two bladder carcinoma, and one glioblastoma cell line, as well as five primary cultures of human melanocytes, hepatocytes, monocytes, CD4 and CD8 lymphocytes, that had been all cultivated under identical conditions, were investigated. Unsupervised affinity propagation clustering of the metabolic footprints yielded five distinct clusters that grouped the investigated cell cultures mainly according to the tissue of origin. A common expected feature of all neoplastic cells was high lactate production. Extracellular arginine and nicotinamide were major discriminants between normal and neoplastic hepatocytes. Further, significant differences in the assimilation of di- and tripeptides were observed. This finding appears to underscore the importance of peptides for meeting the increased bioenergetic and biosynthetic demands of many cancers.