Metabolomics for biomarker discovery in the diagnosis, prognosis, survival and recurrence of colorectal cancer: a systematic review

Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains an incurable disease. There are no effective noninvasive techniques that have achieved colorectal cancer (CRC) diagnosis, prognosis, survival and recurrence in clinic. To investigate colorectal cancer metabolism, we perform an electronic literature search, from 1998 to January 2016, for studies evaluating the metabolomic profile of patients with CRC regarding the diagnosis, recurrence, prognosis/survival, and systematically review the twenty-three literatures included. QUADOMICS tool was used to assess the quality of them. We highlighted the metabolism perturbations based on metabolites and pathway. Metabolites related to cellular respiration, carbohydrate, lipid, protein and nucleotide metabolism were significantly altered in CRC. Altered metabolites were also related to prognosis, survival and recurrence of CRC. This review could represent the most comprehensive information and summary about CRC metabolism to date. It certificates that metabolomics had great potential on both discovering clinical biomarkers and elucidating previously unknown mechanisms of CRC pathogenesis.