Metabolic profiles of gastric cancer cell lines with different degrees of differentiation

Gastric cancer is a commonly found malignant tumor, yet research on biomarkers of gastric cancer still face tremendous challenges. This study is the first to use gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to measure and compare the metabolic profiles of gastric cancer cell lines with varying degrees of differentiation (MKN-28, SGC-7901, and AGS) with that of a normal gastric epithelial cell line (GES-1). OPLS-DA models were established to distinguish gastric cancer cell lines from a normal gastric epithelial cell line. In this study, we identified 278 metabolites, of which 111 show similarity scores greater than 700. Most notably, 6 metabolites (alanine, α-ketoisocaproic acid, proline, glyceric acid, pantothenic acid, and adenosine) showed varying expression levels between gastric cancer cell lines and a normal gastric epithelial cell line. These metabolites are potential biomarkers of gastric cancer and may be of great significance for the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of gastric cancer patients.