Abstract

Metabolic and Signalling Changes in Cancer Determined through Lipidomics

Michael Wakelam, Professor, Babraham Institute

Analysis of lipid molecular species in colorectal tumour and cancer cell line samples by LC-MS has pointed to a range of cancer-associated changes in lipid composition. This has pointed to a pattern of changes in phosphoinositides, in sphingolipids, neutral lipids and phospholipids, most notably there are changes in both the length and saturation of the acyl chains. Adoption of a range of bioinformatics analyses of these data has defined pathways that change and has highlighted these significant changes in acyl chain length and saturation within lipid classes that point to both changes in membrane structure and fluidity. Pathway analysis of the changes points to common pathways that may be malignancy associated. Additionally the analysis highlights changes in enzyme activities that have the potential to be novel therapeutic targets.