Oncolipidomics: Mass spectrometric quantitation of lipids in cancer research

Abstract

This review summarizes available mass spectrometry (MS) based approaches for the quantitative analysis of lipids in biological samples in the cancer research, which is termed here as oncolipidomics. The methodological part shows possible configurations of stand-alone MS or MS coupled to liquid-phase separation techniques. For the characterization of various lipids with the special emphasis on methods convenient for robust high-throughput lipidomic quantitation of biological samples, such as body fluids, tissues, and cell lines. The critical assessment of lipid species dysregulated in various cancer types is provided with the goal to summarize and generalize the typical up and down regulated lipids associated with the progress of tumor growth and evaluate possible future use of lipidomic analysis in the early cancer diagnosis.