Abstract 1485: Measuring relative utilization of aerobic glycolysis in breast cancer cells by positional isotopic discrimination
Authors: Yang Da-Qing , Cleary Margot 
Published: July 2017

Cancer deaths, including breast cancer, are caused by metastasis of the malignant tumors to distant locations. However, current methods of detection cannot distinguish pre-invasive breast cancer from noninvasive breast tumor or benign breast disease. Population-wide mammographic screenings have led to increased detection of ductal carcinoma in situ or DCIS, noninvasive, proliferative cells contained by the basement membrane of the terminal ductal lobular unit. DCIS is usually not associated with metastasis and/or cancer death. Each year, in the US alone, about 1.5 million of women who have been diagnosed with DCIS or a suspicious lump/lesion by mammography will require resection or breast biopsy after diagnosis for further pathologic analysis. However, ~80-85% of biopsies result in noninvasive breast disease or benign findings. As a result, a considerable number of patients suffer from side effects caused by breast biopsy and/or overtreatment. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find a biomarker for pre-invasive breast cancer.

The ability of cancer cells to produce lactate through aerobic glycolysis (the Warburg effect) is a consistent hallmark of cancer, including breast cancer. Recent advancements in liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) technology have significantly improved the sensitivity of this method compared to traditional NMR or GC-MS-based technologies, which make it feasible to detect very low concentrations of small molecules or metabolites. We have recently established a positional isotopic labeling and LC-MS-based targeted metabolomics method that can directly measure the conversion from [1-13C]glucose to [3-13C]lactate through glycolysis. Our results show that metastatic breast cancer cells exhibit a dramatically increased production of [3-13C]lactate from [1-13C]glucose even under aerobic conditions as compared to low- or noninvasive breast cancer cell lines. We found that the rate of aerobic glycolysis is closely correlated with glucose uptake and lactate production in breast cancer cells. We have also observed significantly elevated production of [3-13C]lactate in serum samples of early stage metastatic mammary tumors developed in mice. Since elevated levels of lactate are closely correlated to increased tumor aggressiveness, these results suggest that monitoring of lactate production from glycolysis by targeted metabolomics may provide a biomarker for pre-invasive breast cancer. These results will pave the way for further exploration of the elevated production of lactate as a promising biomarker for pre-invasive breast cancer and for assessment of therapeutic response in clinical trials.

Citation Format: Da-Qing Yang, Margot Cleary. Measuring relative utilization of aerobic glycolysis in breast cancer cells by positional isotopic discrimination [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 1485. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-1485