Metabolomic and elemental profiling of blood serum in bladder cancer

Bladder cancer(BC)is one of the most frequently diagnosed types of urinary cancer.Despite advances in treatment methods,no specific biomarkers are currently in use.Targeted and untargeted profiling of metabolites and elements of human blood serum from 100 BC patients and the same number of normal controls(NCs),with external validation,was attempted using three analytical methods,i.e.,nuclear magnetic resonance,gold and silver-109 nanoparticle-based laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry(LDI-MS),and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry(ICP-OES).All results were subjected to multivariate statistical analysis.Four potential serum biomarkers of BC,namely,isobutyrate,pyroglutamate,choline,and acetate,were quantified with proton nuclear magnetic resonance,which had excellent predictive ability as judged by the area under the curve(AUC)value of 0.999.Two elements,Li and Fe,were also found to distinguish between cancer and control samples,as judged from ICP-OES data and AUC of 0.807(in validation set).Twenty-five putatively identified compounds,mostly related to glycans and lipids,differentiated BC from NCs,as detected using LDI-MS.Five serum metabolites were found to discriminate between tumor grades and nine metabolites between tumor stages.The results from three different analytical platforms demonstrate that the identified distinct serum metabolites and metal elements have potential to be used for noninvasive detection,staging,and grading of BC.

Mass spectrometry-based metabolomic profiling of prostate cancer - a pilot study

Aim:Prostate cancer(PCa)is the most commonly diagnosed non-skin cancer among men.Serum prostate-specific antigen level is used as a standard PCa biomarker for over 20 years.However,it has only 33%specificity and 86%sensitivity(for the cutoff value for prostate biopsy of>4 ng/mL).This leads to overdiagnosis and overtreatment.In-depth insight into PCa metabolomics enables discovery of novel PCa biomarkers.Methods:Metabolomic alternation in PCa serum,urine and interstitial fluid was examined using gold-nanoparticle-based laser mass spectrometry imaging.This study included 5 patients who underwent prostate biopsy with positive result,5 patients with negative result and 10 healthy controls.Results:Over two hundred differentiating metabolites(87 in urine,54 in serum and 78 in interstitial fluid)were detected.Four,twenty two and ten metabolites from urine,serum and interstitial fluid respectively showed statistical significant differential abundance between cancer and control group.Conclusion:Comprehensive metabolomic profile of PCa has been identified.Out of 36 metabolites,20 were identified and should be further evaluated in clinical trials as a potential PCa biomarker.Urine concentration of triglyceride(12:0/20:1)showed over 10 times higher abundance in PCa samples in comparison to healthy controls and is considered the most promising potential biomarker.