Selected Ion Flow Tube-MS Analysis of Headspace Vapor from Gastric Content for the Diagnosis of Gastro-Esophageal Cancer

Abstract

Gastric content is a complex biofluid within the human stomach which has an important role in digestive processes. It is believed that gastric content may be a contributory factor in the development of upper gastro-intestinal diseases. In this work, selected ion flow tube mass spectrometry (SIFT-MS) has been applied to the quantification of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the headspace vapor of gastric content samples, which were retrieved from three groups of patients, including those with gastro-esophageal cancer, noncancer diseases of the upper gastro-intestinal tract, and a healthy cohort. Twelve VOCs have been investigated in this study; the following 7 VOCs, acetone, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, hexanoic acid, hydrogen sulphide, hydrogen cyanide, and methyl phenol, were found to be significantly different between cancer and healthy groups by the Mann-Whitney U test. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis was applied for the combined VOCs of acetaldehyde, formaldehyde, hydrogen sulphide, and methyl phenol to discriminate cancer patients from healthy controls. The area under the curve (AUC) was 0.9. This result raises the prospect that a VOC profile rather than a single biomarker may be preferable in the molecular-orientated diagnosis of gastro-oseophageal cancer, and this warrants further investigation to assess its potential application as a new diagnostic test.

Tyrosine, Phenylalanine, and Tryptophan in Gastroesophageal Malignancy: A Systematic Review

“…Once tyrosine has been released into the gastric content, the action of tyrosine phenol-lyase from the microbiome could convert tyrosine to phenol causing increased concentrations within gastric content. This is in keeping with the findings of previous studies showing increased phenolic compound concentrations within gastric content of patients with gastroesophageal cancer (17). Increased phenol concentrations have also been observed in the exhaled breath of patients with gastroesophageal cancer (15).…”

“…This reaction was first discovered in bacterial cultures by Kakihara and Ichihara (14). Phenolic compounds are potential biomarkers of gastroesophageal cancer with altered concentrations observed within exhaled breath (15), urine (16) and gastric content (17).…”

Tumor-derived hydrogen sulfide, produced by cystathionine-β-synthase, stimulates bioenergetics, cell proliferation, and angiogenesis in colon cancer

“…There are several lines of prior studies demonstrating that volatile sulfur compounds, including H 2 S, are increased in patients with certain forms of cancer (31,32), although its sources or biological functions remained unexplored. In addition, several prior studies demonstrated an increase in CBS expression in various forms of human cancer (33)(34)(35), although the functional consequence of these observations remained unclear.…”

The Therapeutic Potential of Cystathionine β-Synthetase/Hydrogen Sulfide Inhibition in Cancer

“…Several lines of evidence from recent studies demonstrate significant increases in exhaled H 2 S levels in cancer patients (4,48,66,140); however, the identification of its biological source was not investigated. In addition, elevated urinary thiosulfate (the stable breakdown product of H 2 S) levels were found in prostate cancer patients; the mean thiosulfate levels in prostate cancer patients were almost 50 times higher than in the control groups and 5 times higher than in patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (19).…”