Use of UHPLC-HRMS to profile the metabolites from the serum of breast cancer patients

Breast cancer (BC) is the most common malignancy and the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in women worldwide. As such exploring the metabolic changes during human breast carcinogenesis is important for developing disease prevention methods and treatments. In the present study, non-targeted metabolomics with chemometrics based on ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry was conducted to analyze the differences in serum metabolite patterns between female patients with BC and healthy individuals. A total of 3246 metabolites at various concentrations in the sera of healthy controls and patients with BC were found. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway analysis demonstrated that arginine, proline, nicotinate, nicotinamide, caffeine and arachidonic acid metabolism as well as fatty acid biosynthesis were significantly altered in BC patients in comparison to controls. These results suggest that serum metabolic profiling has great potential in discovering molecular biomarkers for the detection of BC breast cancer. They may also help to further our understanding of the underlying mechanisms associated with this debilitating disease.