Global lipidomics identified plasma lipids as novel biomarkers for early detection of lung cancer

// Zongtao Yu 1, 2, * , Hankui Chen 2, * , Junmei Ai 2, * , Yong Zhu 3, * , Yan Li 2 , Jeffrey A. Borgia 4 , Jin-Song Yang 5 , Jicai Zhang 1 , Bin Jiang 3 , Wei Gu 6 and Youping Deng 3, 1, 7 1 Department of Laboratory Medicine, Shiyan Taihe Hospital, College of Biomedical Engineering, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan 442000, Hubei, China 2 Department of Internal Medicine, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL 60612, USA 3 National Center of Colorectal Disease, Nanjing Municipal Hospital of Chinese Medicine, The Third Affiliated Hospital, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Guangdong, Nanjing 210001, China 4 Department of Pathology, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL 60612, USA 5 Department of Oncology, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210006, China 6 Department of Respiration, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210006, China 7 Department of Complementary & Integrative Medicine, University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine, Honolulu, HI 96813, USA * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Youping Deng, email: dengy@hawaii.edu Wei Gu, email: nfh_guwei@126.com Bin Jiang, email: jiangbin_sfy@njucm.edu.cn Keywords: lipidomics; lung cancer; early biomarkers; ESI-MS Received: April 04, 2017 Accepted: August 26, 2017 Published: November 11, 2017 ABSTRACT Purpose: Lipids play roles in membrane structure, energy storage, and signal transduction as well as in human cancers. Here we adopt lipidomics to identify plasma lipid markers for early screening and detection of lung cancer. Experimental Design: Using mass spectrometry, we profiled 390 individual lipids using training and validation strategy in a total of 346 plasma samples from 199 early NSCLC patients, including 113 adenocacinoma and 86 squamous cell cancers (SqCC), and from 147 healthy controls. Results: In the training stage, we found distinct lipid groups that were significantly distributed between NSCLC cases and healthy controls. We further defined a panel of four lipid markers (LPE(18:1), ePE(40:4), C(18:2)CE and SM(22:0)) for prediction of early cancer with a accuracy of 82.3% AUC (Area under ROC curve), sensitivity of 81.9% and specificity of 70.7% at the training stage and yielded the predictive power with accuracy (AUC,80.8%), sensitivity 78.7%, specificity 69.4% and in the validation stage. Conclusions: Using lipidomics we identified several lipid markers capable of discerning early stage lung carcinoma from healthy individuals, which might be further developed as a quick, safe blood test for early diagnosis of this disease.