Comparison of lipidomic profiles sampled with electroporation-based biopsy from healthy skin, squamous cell carcinoma, and basal cell carcinoma

Abstract

Incidence rates of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) and basal cell carcinoma (BCC) are increasing, while the current diagnostic process is time consuming. We introduce a high-throughput sampling approach, termed e-biopsy, utilizing electroporation-based biopsy for efficient collection of tissue lipids. Our study identified 168 lipids using ultra-performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS-MS). The e-biopsy technique demonstrated its ability to profile the human skin lipidome. Comparative analysis revealed 27 differentially expressed lipids (p<0.05). The observed trend of lipidomic profiles was low diglycerides in cSCC and BCC, elevated phospholipids in BCC, and increased lyso-phospholipids in cSCC compared to healthy skin samples. These findings contribute to understanding skin cancers and highlight the potential of e-biopsy for lipidomic analysis in skin tissues.

High-throughput metabolome comparison of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell carcinoma, and healthy skin with e-biopsy sampling

“…Here we present and perform the first comparative analysis of high-throughput metabolomic profiling of cSCC, BCC, and healthy skin tissues sampled with the e-biopsy method. This study contributes to the recently discovered capabilities of e-biopsy in transcriptomics, proteomics, and lipidomics 10–13,20 .…”

“…The analysis of molecular information obtained from specimens collected with this method has successfully differentiated between healthy and cancerous skin tissues [10][11][12] . Combined with highthroughput analytics that have demonstrated their ability to identify genes, proteins, lipids, and metabolites of cSCC and BCC [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] , e-biopsy is a promising direction for analysis of water-soluble molecules of skin cancers. E-biopsy broadens the spectrum of capabilities of handheld devices in cancer diagnostics and differs from tools such as the iKnife 21,22 and MasSpec Pen 23,24 which have been designed for intraoperative use and require real-time connection to a mass spectrometer.…”