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Published on: February 27, 2015
Human plasma metabolomics for identifying differential metabolites and predicting molecular subtypes of breast cancer
Yong Fan1, Xin Zhou2, Tian-Song Xia3
1State Key Laboratory of Natural Medicines, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009, China.
Purpose:
This work aims to identify differential metabolites and predicting molecular subtypes of breast cancer (BC).
Methods:
Plasma samples were collected from 96 BC patients and 79 normal participants. Metabolic profiles were determined by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry based on multivariate statistical data analysis.
Results:
We observed 64 differential metabolites between BC and normal group. Compared to human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative patients, HER2-positive group showed elevated aerobic glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, and increased fatty acid biosynthesis with reduced Krebs cycle. Compared with estrogen receptor (ER)-negative group, ER-positive patients showed elevated alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism, decreased glycerolipid catabolism, and enhanced purine metabolism. A panel of 8 differential metabolites, including carnitine, lysophosphatidylcholine (20:4), proline, alanine, lysophosphatidylcholine (16:1), glycochenodeoxycholic acid, valine, and 2-octenedioic acid, was identified for the classification of BC subtypes. These markers showed potential diagnostic value with average area under the curve at 0.925 (95% CI 0.867-0.983) for the training set (n=51) and 0.893 (95% CI 0.847-0.939) for the test set (n=45).
Conclusion:
Human plasma metabolomics is useful in identifying differential metabolites and predicting breast cancer subtypes.
