Integration of lipidomics and transcriptomics unravels aberrant lipid metabolism and defines cholesteryl oleate as potential biomarker of prostate cancer

In-depth delineation of lipid metabolism in prostate cancer (PCa) is significant to open new insights into prostate tumorigenesis and progression, and provide potential biomarkers with greater accuracy for improved diagnosis. Here, we performed lipidomics and transcriptomics in paired prostate cancer tumor (PCT) and adjacent nontumor (ANT) tissues, followed by external validation of biomarker candidates. We identified major dysregulated pathways involving lipogenesis, lipid uptake and phospholipids remodeling, correlated with widespread lipid accumulation and lipid compositional reprogramming in PCa. Specifically, cholesteryl esters (CEs) were most prominently accumulated in PCa, and significantly associated with cancer progression and metastasis. We showed that overexpressed scavenger receptor class B type I (SR-BI) may contribute to CEs accumulation. In discovery set, CEs robustly differentiated PCa from nontumor (area under curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristics (ROC), 0.90–0.94). In validation set, CEs potently distinguished PCa and non-malignance (AUC, 0.84–0.91), and discriminated PCa and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) (AUC, 0.90–0.96), superior to serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) (AUC = 0.83). Cholesteryl oleate showed highest AUCs in distinguishing PCa from non-malignance or BPH (AUC = 0.91 and 0.96). Collectively, our results unravel the major lipid metabolic aberrations in PCa and imply the potential role of CEs, particularly, cholesteryl oleate, as molecular biomarker for PCa detection.