Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the prevalent histological
subtype of lung cancer. In this study, we performed ultraperformance
liquid chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry (UPLC-HRMS)-based
metabolic profiling of 227 tissue samples from 79 lung cancer patients
with adenocarcinoma (AC) or squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). Orthogonal
partial least squares-discriminant analysis (oPLS-DA) analyses showed
that AC, SCC, and NSCLC tumors were discriminated from adjacent noncancerous
tissue (ANT) and distant noncancerous tissue (DNT) samples with good
accuracies (91.3, 100, and 88.3%), sensitivities (85.7, 100, and 83.9%),
and specificities (94.3, 100, and 90.7%), using 12, 4, and 7 discriminant
metabolites, respectively. The discriminant panel for AC detection
included valine, sphingosine, glutamic acid γ-methyl ester,
and lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) (16:0), levels of which in tumor
tissues were significantly altered. Valine, sphingosine, LPC (18:1),
and leucine derivatives were used for SCC detection. The discrimination
between AC and SCC had 96.8% accuracy, 98.2% sensitivity, and 85.7%
specificity using a five-metabolite panel, of which valine and creatine
had significant differences. The classification models were further
verified with external validation sets, showing a promising prospect
for NSCLC tissue detection and subtyping.