Image-guided metabolomics and transcriptomics reveal tumour heterogeneity in luminal A and B human breast cancer beyond glucose tracer uptake

Abstract

Background: Breast cancer is a metabolically heterogeneous disease, and although the concept of heterogeneous cancer metabolism is known, its precise role in human breast cancer is yet to be fully elucidated.

Methods: We investigated in an explorative approach a cohort of 42 primary mamma carcinoma patients with positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MR) prior to surgery, followed by histopathology and molecular diagnosis. From a subset of patients, which showed high metabolic heterogeneity based on tracer uptake and pathology classification, tumour centre and periphery specimen tissue samples were further investigated by a targeted breast cancer gene expression panel and quantitative metabolomics by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. All data were analysed in a combinatory approach.

Results: [¹⁸F]FDG (2-deoxy-2-[fluorine-18]fluoro-D-glucose) tracer uptake confirmed dominance of glucose metabolism in the breast tumour centre, with lower levels in the periphery. Additionally, we observed differences in lipid and proliferation related genes between luminal A and B subtypes in the centre and periphery. Tumour periphery showed elevated acetate levels and enrichment in lipid metabolic pathways genes especially in luminal B. Furthermore, serine was increased in the periphery and higher expression of thymidylate synthase (TYMS) indicated one-carbon metabolism increased in tumour periphery. The overall metabolic activity based on [¹⁸F]FDG uptake of luminal B subtype was higher than that of luminal A and the difference between the periphery and centre increased with tumour grade.

Conclusion: Our analysis indicates variations in metabolism among different breast cancer subtypes and sampling locations which details the heterogeneity of the breast tumours. Correlation analysis of [¹⁸F]FDG tracer uptake, transcriptome and tumour metabolites like acetate and serine facilitate the search for new candidates for metabolic tracers and permit distinguishing luminal A and B. This knowledge may help to differentiate subtypes preclinically or to provide patients guide for neoadjuvant therapy and optimised surgical protocols based on individual tumour metabolism.

Keywords

[ ¹⁸F]FDG / ¹H-NMR / gene expression / PET/MR / tumour microenvironment / multi-omics

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