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Lysophosphatidylcholine profiling of plasma: discrimination of isomers and discovery of lung cancer biomarkers

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Abstract

Lysophosphatidylcholines (lysoPCs) are a class of compounds that have a constant polar head, and fatty acyls of different chain lengths, position, degrees of saturation, and double bond location in human plasma. LysoPCs levels can be a clinical diagnostic indicator that reveals pathophysiological changes. In this work, a method was developed to discriminate between different types of lysoPCs using reversed phase ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry, using mass spectrometry MSE. Isomeric lysoPCs were distinguished based on retention time and the peak intensity ratio of product ions, and 14 pairs of lysoPCs regioisomers were identified in human plasma. The plasma samples of 12 lung cancer patients and 12 healthy persons were collected and analyzed by principal component analysis to generate metabolic profiles of the identified lysoPCs. Both electrospray ionization ESI+ and ESI− results showed that all lung cancer patients had the same five lysoPC metabolic abnormalities, specifically in sn-1 lyso16:0, sn-2 lysoPC 16:0, sn-1 lysoPC 18:0, sn-1 lysoPC 18:1 and sn-1 lysoPC 18:2. Thus, the function of isomers with different fatty acyl positions may be related to lung cancer, and this may help elucidate the mechanism of the disease.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the grant of Project of National Science Foundation of China (20805046 and 30770646) and Project of International Cooperation Plan from Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2007DFC30550).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dalian Medical University, Dalian, 116044, China

    Jun Dong, Lili Zhao & Lijuan Zou

  2. Key Lab of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, 116023, China

    Jun Dong, Xiaoming Cai, Xingya Xue, Xiuli Zhang & Xinmiao Liang

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  1. Jun Dong
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  2. Xiaoming Cai
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  3. Lili Zhao
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Correspondence to Lijuan Zou or Xiuli Zhang.

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Dong, J., Cai, X., Zhao, L. et al. Lysophosphatidylcholine profiling of plasma: discrimination of isomers and discovery of lung cancer biomarkers. Metabolomics 6, 478–488 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-010-0215-x

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