Determination of targeted metabolites in breast cancer by LC-MS/MS Method

The best preventive method for breast cancer, which accounts for 18% of the most common cancer-related deaths among women, is the early diagnosis. Metabolomic analyzes have an important role in early diagnosis and tracking of the disease progress. Untargeted metabolomic studies are aimed to find new markers for disease diagnosis in while targeted metabolomics are aimed quantitative determinations of selected markers with high accuracy and reproducibility. In the study, targeted metabolomic analyzes for twenty-six metabolites which were proposed in the literature for early diagnosis of breast cancer were performed in plasma samples of 105 healthy volunteers, 172 early stage and 92 metastatic breast cancer patients. For this purpose, a liquid chromatography tandem mass spectroscopy (LC-MS/MS) methodwas developed, validated and applied to control and patient plasma samples. As a result of the analyzes, it was observed that the amounts of glutamic acid, malic acid, glyceric acid, 3-hydroxybutyric acid, glutamine, proline, choline, fumaric acid, lactic acid, fumaric acid/glutamic acid and malic acid/glutamic acid changed in breast cancer patients. These metabolites are recommended for use as biomarkers in the early diagnosis of breast cancer.