Gao P, Huang X, Fang XY, Zheng H, Cai SL, Sun AJ, Zhao L, Zhang Y. Application of metabolomics in clinical and laboratory gastrointestinal oncology. World J Gastrointest Oncol 2021; 13(6): 536-549 [PMID: 34163571 DOI: 10.4251/wjgo.v13.i6.536]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Peng Gao, MD, PhD, Director, Professor, Department of Clinical Laboratory, Dalian Sixth People's Hospital, No. 269 Lugang Guibai Road, Dalian 116031, Liaoning Province, China. gaop@dicp.ac.cn
Research Domain of This Article
Medical Laboratory Technology
Article-Type of This Article
Minireviews
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Peng Gao, Department ofClinical Laboratory, Dalian Sixth People's Hospital, Dalian 116031, Liaoning Province, China
Xin Huang, Liang Zhao, Department of Internal Medicine, Dalian Sixth People's Hospital, Dalian 116031, Liaoning Province, China
Xue-Yan Fang, Department of Nursing, Dalian Sixth People's Hospital, Dalian 116031, Liaoning Province, China
Hui Zheng, Shu-Ling Cai, Ai-Jun Sun, Clinical Research Center, Dalian Sixth People's Hospital, Dalian 116031, Liaoning Province, China
Yong Zhang, Department of Surgery, Dalian Sixth People's Hospital, Dalian 116031, Liaoning Province, China
Author contributions: Gao P and Zhang Y organized the manuscript and wrote the conclusion part; Huang X and Fang XY wrote the laboratory application part; Zheng H and Cai SL wrote the introduction of metabolomics; Sun AJ and Zhao L wrote the clinical application part.
Supported byNational Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81672498; and Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province, China, No. 2019-ZD-1005.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest for this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Peng Gao, MD, PhD, Director, Professor, Department of Clinical Laboratory, Dalian Sixth People's Hospital, No. 269 Lugang Guibai Road, Dalian 116031, Liaoning Province, China. gaop@dicp.ac.cn
Received: January 22, 2021 Peer-review started: January 22, 2021 First decision: February 24, 2021 Revised: March 9, 2021 Accepted: May 19, 2021 Article in press: May 19, 2021 Published online: June 15, 2021
Abstract
Metabolites are versatile bioactive molecules. They are not only the substrates and/or the products of enzymatic reactions but also act as the regulators in the systemic metabolism. Metabolomics is a high-throughput analytical strategy to qualify or quantify as many metabolites as possible in the metabolomes. It is an indispensable part of systems biology. The leading techniques in this field are mainly based on mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The metabolomic analysis has gained wide use in bioscience fields. In the tumor research arena, metabolomics can be employed to identify biomarkers for prediction, diagnosis, and prognosis. Chemotherapeutic effect evaluation and personalized medicine decision-making can also benefit from metabolomic analysis of patient biofluid or biopsy samples. Many cell-level studies can help in disease exploration. In this review, the basic features and principles of varied metabolomic analysis are introduced. The value of metabolomics in clinical and laboratory gastrointestinal cancer studies is discussed, especially for mass spectrometry applications. Besides, combined use of metabolomics and other tools to solve problems in cancer practice is briefly illustrated. In summary, metabolomics paves a new way to explore cancerous diseases in the light of small molecules.
Core Tip: Genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics aim to study the macro-molecules. As a complement to systems biology, metabolomics paves a new way to explore cancerous diseases concerning temporal changes of small molecules. The metabolome is phenotype-specific. Metabolome reflects the organism's responses to environmental stimuli very directly and sensitively.
