ASPO Abstracts
Potential lipid species biomarkers for hepatocellular carcinoma
Category: Early Detection & Risk Prediction
Conference Year: 2021
Abstract Body:
Purpose of Study
To identify lipid species biomarkers for early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in cirrhosis
Methods
STAM mouse model was used to investigate the species alteration in lipid metabolism. A total of 30
liver tissue samples were collected from normal mice (C), STAM mice with liver fibrosis (F) and STAM
mice with HCC (H). Ten samples from each stage were included. Lipidomics analysis was performed
by direct infusion electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) to detect 1881 lipid species.
Lipid species across stages were compared by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by
Tukey test or Kruskal–Wallis test (KWT) followed by Mann–Whitney U test. Lipid species with
significant change (p < 0.05) across stages and significant change in all possible pairwise comparisons
(p <0.05) were retained for correlation analysis. Spearman's rank correlations between the lipid
species retained at each stage were assessed and compared.
Results
Results from means comparisons showed a significant decrease in nine lipid species from ether-linked
phosphatidylcholine (ePC), phosphatidylcholine (PC) and sphingomyelin (SM) during the progression
from normal liver through cirrhosis towards HCC. Among the nine lipid species retained, ePC(40:4)
showed significant decrease (p < 0.05) with more than four-fold change from F to H. Spearman's rank
correlation analysis indicates that the relationship between SM(16:0) and SM(24:0) is more positive in F
(rho= 0.855) than in C (rho= 0.661) while the relationship between SM (16:0) and ePC (38:2) is positive
in C (rho= 0.758) and negative in F (rho= -0.636). A more positive relationships between ePC(38:4)
and PC(42:3) in C than H and a less positive relationship between ePC(38:4) and ePC (38:2) in C than
H were reported with Spearman's rank correlation coefficients increases from 0.745 to 0.867 and
decreases from 0.77 to 0.683 respectively.
Conclusions
Our study showed that PC(34:1), PC(38:1), PC(42:3), SM(16:0), SM(24:0), ePC(38:2), ePC(38:4),
ePC(40:4) and ePC(40:5) may serve as biomarkers for early detection of HCC in cirrhosis. Additional
study is needed to understand the detailed mechanism, our study provides novel insights in the
progress of cirrhosis towards HCC.
Keywords: hepatocellular carcinoma, cirrhosis, lipidomics, biomarker