Metabolomics analysis of the potential anticancer mechanism of annonaceous acetogenins on a multidrug resistant mammary adenocarcinoma cell.

Although annonaceous acetogenins (ACGs) have been reported to have antitumor activity for over three decades, and many of the underlying mechanism of ACGs on cancer have been clarified, there are still outstanding issues. In particular, the changes of small metabolite in cancer cells, caused by ACGs intake, have been reported rarely. Recent research has showed that cellular metabolic profiling coupled with ultra-flow liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UFLC-Q-TOF-MS) and multivariable statistical analysis enables a good understanding of ACGs' effects on multidrug resistant human mammary adenocarcinoma (MCF-7/Adr) cells. As a result, 23 potential biomarkers (p < 0.05, VIP >1) were identified, and 5 pathways (impact-value > 0.10) identified. The differential metabolites suggested that ACGs affected metabolomics pathways, including arginine and proline metabolism, glycerophospholipid metabolism, taurine and hypotaurine metabolism, alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism and D-Glutamine and D-glutamate metabolism.