Metabolomic profiling identifies hair as a robust biological sample for identifying women with cervical cancer.
Rui RanXiaocui ZhongYang YangXianglan TangManlin ShiXingwei JiangAnping LinXiaoling GanTinghe YuLina HuXiaojing DongTing-Li HanPublished in: Medical oncology (Northwood, London, England) (2023)
Metabolomics serves as a useful tool for identifying biomarkers of disease and uncovering pathogenic mechanisms. However, most metabolomic studies use biological fluids such as blood and urine as biospecimens, which could be dramatically influenced by daily activities and dietary variation, resulting in measurement fluctuations. In contrast, hair may serve as a robust source of stable longitudinal metabolite information. Here, we conducted a pilot study to investigate the possibility of using hair as a biospecimen for the metabolomic analysis of cervical cancer. Hair, plasma, urine, and cervical tissue samples from cervical cancer and benign tumor patients were collected. Biospecimens were then tested using a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry-based metabolomic platform. The expressions of enzymatic genes related to metabolic changes were validated using qPCR. Statistical analyses were calculated via the R-console platform. Metabolite profiles in both hair and cervical tissue samples were significantly different between cancer and control groups, while no difference was observed in plasma and urine samples. Further analysis showed that most of the altered metabolites in hair were upregulated, and they had a negative correlation with those in the cervical tissue. Eight common metabolites showed an area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve greater than 0.95. These metabolites primarily participated in amino acid metabolism, cofactor synthesis, ferroptosis, and glycolysis. The gene expressions (IDH1, OGDH, GLUD1, ENO1, GSS, and GPX4) associated with the shortlisted metabolic pathways were also upregulated. Our study is the first to reveal metabolomic changes of hair in cervical cancer patients and demonstrates the potential for the hair metabolome to be used for biomarker identification in cervical cancer.
Keyphrases
- genome wide
- gas chromatography mass spectrometry
- end stage renal disease
- ms ms
- magnetic resonance
- chronic kidney disease
- amino acid
- mass spectrometry
- squamous cell carcinoma
- single cell
- ejection fraction
- dna methylation
- gene expression
- peritoneal dialysis
- social media
- hydrogen peroxide
- risk assessment
- drug induced
- solid phase extraction