Urinary metabolomics for discovering metabolic biomarkers of laryngeal cancer using UPLC-QTOF/MS.

The incidence of laryngeal cancer (LYC) is second only to lung cancer, which is also the second most common cancer in head and neck cancer. Risk assessment metabolomics biomarkers to diagnose LYC have not been found by now. To profile the metabolites in healthy controls (HCs) and LYC patients (LYCs), urine metabonomics study was performed based on reversed phase liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (RPLC-QTOF/MS). Six urine differentially expressed metabolites (Variable Importance in Projection >1, p <  0.05) were identified by searching reference library or comparing with standard based on OPLS-DA (orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis) model. d-pantothenic acid, palmitic acid, myristic acid, oleamide, sphinganine and phytosphingosine were identified as differential metabolites associated with the LYC and they might play roles in sphingolipid metabolism, fatty acid biosynthesis, fatty acid elongation in mitochondria, pantothenate and coenzyme A (CoA) biosynthesis, beta-Alanine metabolism and fatty acid metabolism. These six differential metabolites were combined to test the potentiality of diagnosis of LYC. Results revealed that the area under the curve (AUC) value, sensitivity and specificity of receiving operator characteristic (ROC) curve were 0.97, 95% and 97%, respectively, indicating that this diagnosis method could be used to distinguish LYCs from HCs with good sensitivity and specificity.