Lipid Identification of Biomarkers in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma by Lipidomic Analysis

Abstract

Lipids participate in many important biological functions through energy storage, membrane structure stabilization, signal transduction, and molecular recognition. Previous studies have shown that patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) have abnormal lipid metabolism. However, studies characterizing lipid metabolism in ESCC patients through lipidomics are limited. Plasma lipid profiles of 65 ESCC patients and 42 healthy controls (HC) were characterized by lipidomics-based ultraperformance liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF-MS). Single-factor and multi-factor statistical analysis were used to screen the differences in blood lipids between groups, and combined with component ratio analysis and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve diagnostic efficiency assessment, to reveal the potential mechanisms and biomarkers of ESCC. There were significant differences in lipid profiles between the ESCC and HC groups. Thirty-six differential lipids (11 up-regulated and 25 down-regulated) were selected based on the criteria of p < .05 and fold change > 1.3 or < 0.77. Glycerophospholipids were the major differential lipids, suggesting that these lipid metabolic pathways exhibit a significant imbalance that may contribute to the development of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Among them, the seven candidate biomarkers for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma with the highest diagnostic value are three phosphatidylserine (PS), three fatty acids (FA) and one phosphatidylcholine (PC).

Acknowledgements

We thank all participants and the researchers and collaborators involved in this study.

Authors contributions

QW. W and DQ. L designed and directed the study. Y. Z and LQ. J and participated in sample collection. L. L. and ZC. X and participate in data compilation. TW. S participated in data analysis and writing the manuscript. Final draft read and approved by all authors.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability statement

The analyzed data sets generated during the study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Education Department of Anhui Province (No.2022AH051221), Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Biological Macro-molecules Research of Wannan Medical College (No.LAB2022 04).