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Analysis of low-molecular-weight metabolites in stomach cancer cells by a simplified and inexpensive GC/MS metabolomics method

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Abstract

GC/MS coupled metabolomics analysis, using a simplified and much less expensive silylation process with trimethylsilyl cyanide (TMSCN), was conducted to investigate metabolic abnormalities in stomach cancer cells. Under optimized conditions for derivatization by TMSCN and methanol extraction, 228 metabolites were detected using GC/MS spectrometry analysis, and 89 metabolites were identified using standard compounds and the NIST database. Ten metabolite levels were found to be lower in stomach cancer cells relative to normal cells. Among those ten metabolites, four metabolites—ribose, proline, pyroglutamic acid, and glucose—were known to be linked to cancers. In particular, pyroglutamic acid level showed a drastic reduction of 22-fold in stomach cancer cells. Since glutamine and glutamic acid are known to undergo cyclization to pyroglutamic acid, the 22-fold reduction might be the actual reduction in the levels of glutamine and/or glutamic acid—both known to be cancer-related. Hence, the marked reduction in pyroglutamic acid level might serve as a biomarker to aid early detection of stomach cancer.

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Acknowledgments

The project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21772180) and Key Scientific Research Project of Universities, Department of Education of Henan Province, China (No. 20A350016). All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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  1. Min Dai and Ting Ma contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemistry, Zhengzhou University, 75 University Road, Zhengzhou, 450052, Henan, China

    Min Dai, Ying Niu, Mengmeng Zhang, Zhiwu Zhu & Shaomin Wang

  2. School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhengzhou University, 100 Science Avenue, Zhengzhou, 450001, Henan, China

    Ting Ma & Hongmin Liu

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  1. Min Dai
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by M Dai, T Ma, Y Niu, MM Zhang, ZW Zhu and SM Wang. The first draft of the manuscript was written by M Dai. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shaomin Wang.

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Dai, M., Ma, T., Niu, Y. et al. Analysis of low-molecular-weight metabolites in stomach cancer cells by a simplified and inexpensive GC/MS metabolomics method. Anal Bioanal Chem 412, 2981–2991 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-020-02543-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-020-02543-6

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