Shen CT, et al. – Researchers conducted this work to distinguish serum metabolic signature of distant metastatic PTC. The data confirmed that serum metabolomics profiling could significantly discriminate papillary thyroid cancer patients according to distant metastasis. Moreover, potential metabolic aberration in distant metastatic PTC could be involved in different biologic behaviors of tumor cells including proliferation, invasion/migration, and immune escape. It was noted that diet/gut microbiota produced metabolites could play an important role in these impacts. This work may serve new clues to find the underlying mechanisms regarding to the distant metastasis of PTC as well as potential adjuvant therapy targets.

Methods

• Researchers applied gas chromatography time–of–flight mass spectrometry (GC–TOF–MS) to evaluate the serum from 77 patients diagnosed with PTC (37 in distant metastasis group and 40 in ablation group).
• They used principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal partial least–squares–discriminant analysis (OPLS–DA)scores plots to evaluate the data.

Results

• The evidence showed that PCA and OPLS–DA analyses illustrated an evident trend of separation between 40 serum samples from the ablation group and 37 samples from distant metastasis group.
• They distinguished a total of 31 metabolites which are related to amino acid, lipid, glucose, vitamin metabolism and diet/gut microbiota interaction.
• As evidence accumulates, pathway analysis displayed ‘alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism’ and ‘inositol phosphate metabolism’ were the most relevant pathways.