Global lipidomics identified plasma lipids as novel biomarkers for early detection of lung cancer

Purpose: Lipids play roles in membrane structure, energy storage, and signal transduction as well as in human cancers. Here we adopt lipidomics to identify plasma lipid markers for early screening and detection of lung cancer. Experimental Design: Using mass spectrometry, we profiled 390 individual lipids using training and validation strategy in a total of 346 plasma samples from 199 early NSCLC patients, including 113 adenocacinoma and 86 squamous cell cancers (SqCC), and from 147 healthy controls. Results: In the training stage, we found distinct lipid groups that were significantly distributed between NSCLC cases and healthy controls. We further defined a panel of four lipid markers (LPE(18:1), ePE(40:4), C(18:2) CE and SM(22:0)) for prediction of early cancer with a accuracy of 82.3% AUC (Area under ROC curve), sensitivity of 81.9% and specificity of 70.7% at the training stage and yielded the predictive power with accuracy (AUC, 80.8%), sensitivity 78.7%, specificity 69.4% and in the validation stage. Conclusions: Using lipidomics we identified several lipid markers capable of discerning early stage lung carcinoma from healthy individuals, which might be further developed as a quick, safe blood test for early diagnosis of this disease.