The following is a summary of “Characterization of the metabolomic profile of renal cell carcinoma by high-resolution magic angle spinning proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy,” published in the November 2023 issue of Urology by Huynh, et al.

Renal cell cancer, or RCC, is a metabolic disease. Different types of RCC show problems in different metabolic processes. Metabolomics might be a more sensitive way to find out how diseases work. Researchers, for a study, used high-resolution magic angle spinning (HRMAS) proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹HMRS) to look into the metabolomic characteristics of RCC. Surgical tissue samples from major or partial nephrectomies were taken from their frozen tissue bank. It was fresh-frozen and then kept at -80 °C until it was time to be analyzed. It was done to do tissue HRMAS-1HMRS. They used a MatLab-based curve fitting program to look at the spectra and find the relative levels for 59 areas of interest (ROIs) in the spectrum. The metabolomic profiles of different types of RCC and benign tumors, such as angiomyolipoma and oncocytoma, were compared. 

False discovery rates (FDR) from the response screening were used to account for repeated testing. ROIs with FDR P < 0.05 were seen as possible RCC indicators. The Wilcoxon rank sum test was used to look at the differences in median ¹HMRS relative levels for metabolites that might help tell the difference between an RCC and a normal tumor. Based on how much of each molecule there was, logistic regression calculated the odds ratios for the chance of cancer. They looked at 38 cases of RCC (16 clear cells, 11 papillary, and 11 chromophobes), 10 oncocytomas, 7 angiomyolipomas, and 13 matched pairs of nearby normal tissue. Histidine, phenylalanine, phosphocholine, serine, phosphocreatine, creatine, glycerophosphocholine, valine, glycine, myo-inositol, scyllo-inositol, taurine, glutamine, spermine, acetoacetate, and lactate are some of the molecules that could be used to identify cancer based on FDR p-values. 

Higher amounts of spermine, histidine, and phenylalanine (3.15 to 3.13 ppm) were linked to a lower risk of RCC (OR 4.00 x 10^-5, 95% CI 7.42 x 10^-8, 0.02), while 2.84 x 2.82 ppm raised the risk of cancerous disease (OR 7158.67, 95% CI 6.3, 8.3 x 10^-6). The exact molecules that make up this area have not yet been found. The metabolomic makeup of dangerous tumors was not affected by the stage of the tumor, which suggests that metabolites depend on the histopathological group. Metabolites that may help identify RCC were found by HRMAS-1HMRS. They showed that metabolites in the 3.14 to 3.13 ppm ROI were found in smaller amounts in RCC, while higher levels of metabolites in the 2.84 to 2.82 ppm ROI were linked to a much higher risk of RCC. These results need to be confirmed by more studies with a bigger group of people.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1078143923003058