Abstract 1839: Development of urinary pseudo-targeted LC-MS based metabolomics method and its application in hepatocellular carcinoma biomarker discovery

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the pestilent malignancies leading to cancer-related death. Discovering effective biomarkers for HCC diagnosis is an urgent demand. To identify potential metabolites biomarkers, we developed a urinary pseudo-targeted method based on liquid chromatography- triple quadrupole linear ion Q-trap 5500 mass spectrometry (LC-QTRAP- MS). Compared with non-targeted method, the pseudo-targeted method can achieve better data quality which benefits differential metabolites discovery. The established method was applied to cirrhosis (CIR) and HCC investigation. It was found that urinary nucleosides, bile acids, citric acid and several amino acids were significantly changed in liver disease groups compared with the controls, featuring the dysregulation of purine metabolism, energy metabolism and amino metabolism in liver diseases. Furthermore, some metabolites such as cycle cyclic adenosine monophosphate (AMP), glutamine and, short- and medium-chain acylcarnitines were the differential metabolites of HCC and CIR. Based on binary logistic regression, butyrylcarnitine (carnitine C4:0) and hydantoin-5-propionic acid were defined as a combinational marker to distinguish HCC from CIR. The area under curve (AUC) was 0.786 and 0.773 for discovery stage and validation stage samples, respectively. These data show that the established pseudo-targeted method is a complementary one of targeted and non-targeted methods for metabolomics study. Note: This abstract was not presented at the meeting. Citation Format: Zhenzhen Yao, Yaping Shao, Guowang Xu. Development of urinary pseudo-targeted LC-MS based metabolomics method and its application in hepatocellular carcinoma biomarker discovery. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 1839. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-1839