Recent advances in lung cancer lipidomics: Analytical techniques and their applications

Lipidomics provides a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of lipids in biofluids, cells, and tissues, playing a crucial role in biomarker discovery, lipid reprogramming, and precision medicine. This approach has been extensively used to assess global metabolic changes in organisms, aiding in the identification of potential cancer biomarkers, understanding cancer progression, and uncovering the underlying pathophysiology. Lung cancer, being the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, suffers from poor prognosis and challenges in early detection. While abnormalities in the lipidome have been observed in lung cancer, the comprehensive lipid reprogramming and mechanisms involved remain unclear. Thus, there is a pressing need to explore these mechanisms and identify biomarkers for early detection of different types of lung cancer. This review focuses on recent advances in lung cancer lipidomics, utilizing techniques such as "Shotgun" lipidomics, LC-MS-based lipidomics, GC-MS-based lipidomics, and imaging lipidomics for biomarker discovery, cancer subtyping, and metabolic reprogramming. Additionally, the lipidomics analysis process, including sample preparation and data interpretation, is summarized.