Abstract

Carlos Augusto Rodrigues Veo*, Marcos Vinicius Denadai, Sandra Morini Silva, M. Gordian Adam, Udo Muller, Simon Schafferer, Ismael D. C. G. Da Silva, Isabella Alves Brunetti and Delcio Matos

ABSTRACT

Metabolomics is an emerging analytical tool in oncology research which allows the identification of specific biomarkers and helps improve clinical results. The present study aimed to identify metabolic conditions in patients with colorectal cancer. This investigation used mass spectrometry to analyze the plasma of patients with colorectal adenocarcinoma. In the study, 85 plasma samples were analyzed and metabolite extraction was performed using kits. A targeted metabolomic approach with the Biocrates Absolute IDQ® p180 kit was used to quantify metabolites of various biochemical classes. The statistical analysis included data normalization and quality control, principal component analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis, univariate statistics with significance testing, and analysis of fold changes. The comparison between plasma and tissue samples showed differences in only a few analytes. The application of more restricted statistics with correction to control the false discovery rate (Benjamini-Hochberg adjustment) often did not show significant changes in the different groups of patients. Several sphingomyelins were significantly different in more than one group. The analysis without adjustment yielded significantly different metabolites, mainly sphingomyelins and phospholipids.