Metabolome analysis for discovering biomarkers of gastroenterological cancer

Abstract

Improvements in analytical technologies have made it possible to rapidly determine the concentrations of thousands of metabolites in any biological sample, which has resulted in metabolome analysis being applied to various types of research, such as clinical, cell biology, and plant/food science studies. The metabolome represents all of the end products and by-products of the numerous complex metabolic pathways operating in a biological system. Thus, metabolome analysis allows one to survey the global changes in an organism's metabolic profile and gain a holistic understanding of the changes that occur in organisms during various biological processes, e.g., during disease development. In clinical metabolomic studies, there is a strong possibility that differences in the metabolic profiles of human specimens reflect disease-specific states. Recently, metabolome analysis of biofluids, e.g., blood, urine, or saliva, has been increasingly used for biomarker discovery and disease diagnosis. Mass spectrometry-based techniques have been extensively used for metabolome analysis because they exhibit high selectivity and sensitivity during the identification and quantification of metabolites. Here, we describe metabolome analysis using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry. Furthermore, the findings of studies that attempted to discover biomarkers of gastroenterological cancer are also outlined. Finally, we discuss metabolome analysis-based disease diagnosis.

Beyond microbial community composition: functional activities of the oral microbiome in health and disease

“…The analysis of the metabolome in GCF or saliva has the potential of be used to search for biomarkers beyond just common oral diseases. Thus, oral metabolomic analysis has been used for the search of biomarkers in different kind of cancers [63,64], including oral cancer [65]. …”

Investigations in the possibility of early detection of colorectal cancer by gas chromatography/triple-quadrupole mass spectrometry

“…Therefore, the metabolome could be considered to be a summary of the other upstream omics profiles, and metabolome analysis might be able to detect subtle changes in metabolic pathways and deviations from homeostasis before phenotypic changes occur [5, 6]. Thus, metabolomics could contribute greatly to biomarker research [7, 8]. Our previous study [4], in which a colorectal cancer prediction model was established, included colorectal cancer patients with stage 0 to IV disease, and the colorectal cancer prediction model demonstrated sensitivity and specificity values of about 80%.…”

Recent advances in CE‐MS coupling: Instrumentation, methodology, and applications

“…Similar CE‐TOF‐MS analysis method was performed to identify the metabolic signatures associated with resistance of lung cancer cells to erlotinib . An untargeted metabolome analysis was applied for discovering biomarkers of gastroenterological cancer . Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is another example of lethal malignancies with a mortality that is almost identical to incidence, although early detected tumors are potentially curable.…”