Biomarkers Identified for Early Lung Cancer Diagnosis

They were able to access samples stored from the Beta-Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial (CARET) clinical trial. A liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry hydrophilic interaction method designed to profile a wide range of metabolites was applied to pre-diagnostic serum samples from CARET participants who were current or former heavy smokers, consisting of 100 patients who subsequently developed non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and 199 matched controls.

The team used the Agilent 1200 high-performance liquid chromatography system and the Agilent quadrupole time-of-flight (QTOF) 6530 mass spectrometer (Agilent Technologies; Santa Clara, CA, USA) with a JetStream ion source. A separate serum aliquot was used to quantify levels of pro-surfactant protein B (pro-SFTPB), a previously established protein biomarker for NSCLC. A blinded validation of a metabolite, identified as N1,N12-diacetylspermine (DAS), and pro-SFTPB was performed using an independent set of CARET pre-diagnostic sera from 108 patients with NSCLC and 216 matched controls. Serum DAS was elevated by 1.9-fold, demonstrating significant specificity and sensitivity in the discovery set for samples collected up to six months before diagnosis of NSCLC. In addition, DAS significantly complemented performance of pro-SFTPB in both the discovery and validations sets.

Oliver Fiehn, PhD, a professor of molecular and cellular biology, and senior author of the study, said, “Early diagnosis is the key to fighting lung cancer. Individually, the markers diacetylspermine and pro-surfactant protein B were about 70% predictive, but in combination, that rose to 80%. In other words, eight out of ten people with early-stage cancer would be correctly identified by the combined test.” The study was published on August 17, 2015, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Related Links:
West Coast Metabolomics Center
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