Integrated Metabolic Profiling and Gene Expression Analysis Reveals Therapeutic Modalities in Breast Cancer

In this study, we performed metabolite profiling and RNA-sequencing on human breast cancer tumors and normal breast tissue samples, including triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), estrogen receptor positive breast cancer (ER+) and paired normal samples, and patient-derived xenografts (PDX) samples. Here, we report two distinctive groups defined by metabolites; a TNBC-HIGH group that shows high levels of pyrimidine pathway metabolites and biosynthetic enzymes, and an ER-HIGH group that shows high levels of fatty acid and arginine biosynthesis intermediates. We identify different metabolic enrichment profiles between cell lines grown in vitro vs. in vivo; cell lines grown in vivo recapitulate patient tumors metabolic profiles. Further, we identify a subset of genes that strongly... (for more see dbGaP study page.)