Abstract
Introduction
Hypoxia commonly occurs in cancers and is highly related with the occurrence, development and metastasis of cancer. Treatment of triple negative breast cancer remains challenge. Knowledge about the metabolic status of triple negative breast cancer cell lines in hypoxia is valuable for the understanding of molecular mechanisms of this tumor subtype to develop effective therapeutics.
Objectives
Comprehensively characterize the metabolic profiles of triple negative breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 in normoxia and hypoxia and the pathways involved in metabolic changes in hypoxia.
Methods
Differences in metabolic profiles affected pathways of MDA-MB-231 cells in normoxia and hypoxia were characterized using GC–MS based untargeted and stable isotope assisted metabolomic techniques.
Results
Thirty-three metabolites were significantly changed in hypoxia and nine pathways were involved. Hypoxia increased glycolysis, inhibited TCA cycle, pentose phosphate pathway and pyruvate carboxylation, while increased glutaminolysis in MDA-MB-231 cells.
Conclusion
The current results provide metabolic differences of MDA-MB-231 cells in normoxia and hypoxia conditions as well as the involved metabolic pathways, demonstrating the power of combined use of untargeted and stable isotope-assisted metabolomic methods in comprehensive metabolomic analysis.
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This work was supported by Grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81001419, 81273478), the National Science and Technology Major Project (2012ZX09301003-001-010).
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Yang, J., Cheng, J., Sun, B. et al. Untargeted and stable isotope-assisted metabolomic analysis of MDA-MB-231 cells under hypoxia. Metabolomics 14, 40 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-018-1338-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-018-1338-8