Metabolomic profile of malignant ovarian tumors

Abstract

Purpose of the study. Investigate the metabolomic profile in tissues of patients with serous ovarian adenocarcinoma.Materials and methods. The study included 100 patients with serous ovarian adenocarcinoma. Chromatographic separation of metabolites was performed on a Vanquish Flex UHPLC System chromatograph, which was coupled with an Orbitrap Exploris 480 mass spectrometer. Differences were assessed using the Mann-Whitney test with Bonferroni correction.Results. In ovarian tumor tissue, 20 compounds had abnormal concentrations compared to normal tissue: increased levels of kynurenine, phenylalanylvaline, lysophosphatidylcholine (18:3), lysophosphatidylcholine (18:2), alanylleucine, L-phenylalanine, phosphatidylinositol (34:1), 5-methoxytryptophan, lysophosphatidylcholine (14:0), indoleacrylic acid and decreased levels of myristic acid, decanoylcarnitine, aspartylglycine, malonylcarnitine, 3-methylxanthine, 3-oxododecanoic acid, 2-hydroxymyristic acid, N-acetylproline, L-octanoylcarnitine and capryloylglycine.Conclusion. A significant metabolic imbalance was found in ovarian tumor tissue, expressed in abnormal concentrations of fatty acids and their derivatives, acylcarnitines, amino acids and their derivatives, phospholipids and nitrogenous base derivatives. The concentrations of these 20 metabolites in tissues can serve as diagnostic markers of ovarian cancer. Thus, metabolomic tissue profiling allowed both to identify potential markers of the disease and to better understand the molecular mechanisms of changes underlying the development of this disease.

Keywords

• metabolites
• ultra-high performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry
• ovarian serous adenocarcinoma
• biomarkers