Effect of cold atmospheric plasma treatment on the metabolites of human leukemia cells

BACKGROUND: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a typically fatal malignancy and new drug and treatment need to be developed for a better survival outcome. Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) is a novel technology, which has been widely applied in biomedicine, especially in various of cancer treatment. However, the changes in cell metabolism after CAP treatment of leukemia cells have been rarely studied. METHODS: In this study, we investigated the metabolite profiling of plasma treatment on leukemia cells based on Gas Chromatography Tandem Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (GC-TOFMS). Simultaneously, we conducted a series of bioinformatics analysis of metabolites and metabolic pathways with significant differences after basic data analysis. RESULTS: 800 signals were detected by GC–TOF mass-spectrometry and then evaluated using PCA and OPLS-DA. All the differential metabolites were listed and the related metabolic pathways were analyzed by KEGG pathway. The results showed that alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism had a significant change after plasma treatment. Meanwhile, d-glutamine and d-glutamate metabolism were significantly changed by CAP. Glutaminase activity was decreased after plasma treatment, which might lead to glutamine accumulation and leukemia cells death. CONCLUSIONS: We found the above two metabolic pathways vulnerable to plasma treatment, which might result in leukemia cells death and might be the cornerstone of further exploration of plasma treatment targets. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12935-019-0856-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.