Plasma Metabolomic Signatures Associated with Long-term Breast Cancer Risk in the SU.VI.MAX Prospective Cohort

Breast cancer is a major cause of death in occidental women. The role of metabolism in breast cancer etiology remains unclear. Metabolomics may help to elucidate novel biological pathways and identify new biomarkers to predict breast cancer long before symptoms appear. The aim of this study was to investigate whether untargeted metabolomic signatures from blood draws of healthy women could contribute to better understand and predict the long-term risk of developing breast cancer.

A nested case-control study was conducted within the SU.VI.MAX prospective cohort (13 years of follow-up) to analyze baseline plasma samples of 211 incident breast cancer cases and 211 matched controls by LC/MS. Multivariable conditional logistic regression models were computed.

A total of 3,565 ions were detected and 1,221 were retained for statistical analysis. A total of 73 ions were associated with breast cancer risk (P < 0.01; FDR ≤ 0.2). Notably, we observed that a lower plasma level of O-succinyl-homoserine (OR = 0.70, 95%CI = [0.55-0.89]) and higher plasma levels of valine/norvaline [1.45 (1.15-1.83)], glutamine/isoglutamine [1.33 (1.07-1.66)], 5-aminovaleric acid [1.46 (1.14-1.87)], phenylalanine [1.43 (1.14-1.78)], tryptophan [1.40 (1.10-1.79)], γ-glutamyl-threonine [1.39 (1.09-1.77)], ATBC [1.41 (1.10-1.79)], and pregnene-triol sulfate [1.38 (1.08-1.77)] were associated with an increased risk of developing breast cancer during follow-up.Conclusion: Several prediagnostic plasmatic metabolites were associated with long-term breast cancer risk and suggested a role of microbiota metabolism and environmental exposure.

After confirmation in other independent cohort studies, these results could help to identify healthy women at higher risk of developing breast cancer in the subsequent decade and to propose a better understanding of the complex mechanisms involved in its etiology.