Study of metabonomic profiles of human esophageal carcinoma by use of high-resolution magic-angle spinning 1H NMR spectroscopy and multivariate data analysis

Esophageal carcinoma (EC) is one of the most common malignant tumors. EC survival has remained disappointingly low because of the high malignancy of esophageal cancer and the lack of obvious clinical symptoms at an early stage. Early diagnosis is often difficult because the small tumor nodules are frequently missed. Metabonomics based on high-resolution magic-angle spinning (HRMAS) NMR has been popular for tumor detection because it is highly sensitive, provides rich biochemical information and requires no sample pretreatment. H-1 HRMAS spectra of non-involved adjacent esophageal tissues and of well differentiated and moderately differentiated esophageal carcinoma tumors were recorded and analyzed by use of multivariate and statistical analysis techniques. Moderately differentiated EC tumors were found to have increased total choline, alanine, and glutamate and reduced creatine, myo-inositol, and taurine compared with non-involved adjacent tissues. Moreover, clear differences between the metabonomic profiles of EC tissues enabled tumor differentiation. Furthermore, the integral Gly/MI ratio for samples of different tissue types were statistically significantly different; this was sufficient both for distinguishing non-involved tissues from esophageal carcinoma and for classification of well differentiated and moderately differentiated EC tumors.