Department of Urology, Charité-University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

Recent evidence suggests that metabolic changes play a pivotal role in the biology of cancer and in particular renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Here, a global metabolite profiling approach was applied to characterize the metabolite pool of RCC and normal renal tissue. Advanced decision tree models were applied to characterize the metabolic signature of RCC and to explore features of metastasized tumors. The findings were validated in a second independent dataset. Vitamin E derivates and metabolites of glucose, fatty acid, and inositol phosphate metabolism determined the metabolic profile of RCC. Alpha-tocopherol, hippuric acid, myoinositol, fructose-1-phosphate, and glucose-1-phosphate contributed most to the tumor/normal discrimination and all showed pronounced concentration changes in RCC. The identified metabolic profile was characterized by a low recognition error of only 5% for tumor versus normal samples. Data on metastasized tumors suggested a key role for metabolic pathways involving arachidonic acid, free fatty acids, proline, uracil, and the tricarboxylic acid cycle. These results illustrate the potential of mass spectroscopy based metabolomics in conjunction with sophisticated data analysis methods to uncover the metabolic phenotype of cancer. Differentially regulated metabolites, such as vitamin E compounds, hippuric acid, and myoinositol, provide leads for the characterization of novel pathways in RCC.

Written by:
Catchpole G, Platzer A, Weikert C, Kempkensteffen C, Johannsen M, Krause H, Jung K, Miller K, Willmitzer L, Selbig J, Weikert S. Are you the author?

Reference:
J Cell Mol Med. 2009 Oct 20. Epub ahead of print.
doi:10.1111/j.1582-4934.2009.00939.x

PubMed Abstract
PMID:19845817

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