Serum metabolomics analysis reveals changes in signaling lipids in breast cancer patients

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer and one of the leading causes of cancer death among women worldwide. It is a biologically variable disease with different molecular subtypes, risk factors, clinical behaviors and responses to treatment. Better understanding of the molecular changes associated with each subtype is essential for identifying new therapeutic targets and markers for the monitoring of treatment responses. In this pilot study, mass spectrometry-based metabolic profiling was performed to characterize the changes in serum profiles of patients with invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) - the most common type of breast cancer. Serum samples from 20 IDC patients and 20 age- and gender-matched healthy subjects were analyzed and 15 differentially expressed metabolites were identified. These metabolites are involved in several metabolic pathways such as sphingolipid metabolism, phospholipid metabolism and fatty acid β-oxidation. Among these, two classes of signaling lipids, lysophosphatidylethanolamine and ceramide, may play an important role in IDC development and progression. This study demonstrates metabolic profiling as a promising tool for finding disease biomarkers and our findings provide new directions for further mechanistic studies on the pathology of IDC.