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Potential plasma lipid biomarkers in early-stage breast cancer
Nan Jiang1, Guofen Zhang1, Lijie Pan1
1Department of General Surgery, First Hospital of Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100016, China.
Objective:
To find new biomarkers for early diagnosis of breast cancer.
Results:
847 lipid species were identified from 78 plasma samples (37 breast cancer samples and 41 healthy controls) by ultra HPLC coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry. These include 321 glycerophospholipids (GPs), 265 glycerolipids (GLs), 91 sphingolipids (SPs), 77 fatty acyls (FAs), 68 sterol lipids (STs), 18 prenol lipids (PRs), 6 polyketides (PKs), and 1 saccharolipid (SL). Separation was observed from an orthogonal signal correction Partial Least Square Discrimination Analysis model. Based on this analysis, six differentiating lipids were identified: PC (20:2/20:5), PC (22:0/24:1), TG (12:0/14:1), and DG (18:1/18:2) had high levels, whereas PE (15:0/19:1) and N-palmitoyl proline had low levels in the breast cancer samples compared with the healthy controls. Furthermore, significant differences in metabolites were found among some clinical characteristics.
Conclusions:
Our results reveal that six specific lipids could serve as potential biomarkers for early diagnosis of breast cancer.
