Study of the Relationship Between Serum Amino Acid Metabolism and Lymph Node Metastasis in Patients with Colorectal Cancer

PURPOSE: Lymph node metastasis is one of the important prognostic factors of colorectal cancer, and an important index of individualized treatment. The purpose of this study is to use metabonomics to identify potential molecular markers of lymph node metastasis in colorectal cancer (CRC). PATIENTS AND METHODS: Peripheral blood samples of 223 CRC patients were collected. The metabolic levels of amino acids and carnitine in peripheral blood of CRC patients, with and without lymph node metastasis, were analyzed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). RESULTS: The results show that there were significant differences in the levels of serum amino acids and carnitine between lymph node metastatic patients and lymph node non-metastatic patients. The diagnostic model that was constructed by 9 types of serum metabolites has a high diagnostic ability. CONCLUSION: LC-MS/MS is a detection method that has a broad application in predicting CRC prognosis, individualized treatment, and in studying the mechanism of lymph node metastasis.