Lipids, particularly phospholipids (PLs), are key components of cellular membrane. PLs play important and diverse roles in cells such as chemical‐energy storage, cellular signaling, cell membranes, and cell–cell interactions in tissues. All these cellular processes are pertinent to cells that undergo transformation, cancer progression, and metastasis. Thus, there is a strong possibility that some classes of PLs are expected to present in cancer cells and tissues in cellular physiology. The mass spectrometric soft‐ionization techniques, electrospray ionization (ESI), and matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) are well‐established in the proteomics field, have been used for lipidomic analysis in cancer research. This review focused on the applications of mass spectrometry (MS) mainly on ESI‐MS and MALDI‐MS in the structural characterization, molecular composition and key roles of various PLs present in cancer cells, tissues, blood, and urine, and on their importance for cancer‐related problems as well as challenges for development of novel PL‐based biomarkers. The profiling of PLs helps to rationalize their functions in biological systems, and will also provide diagnostic information to elucidate mechanisms behind the control of cancer, diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases. The investigation of cellular PLs with MS methods suggests new insights on various cancer diseases and clinical applications in the drug discovery and development of biomarkers for various PL‐related different cancer diseases. PL profiling in tissues, cells and body fluids also reflect the general condition of the whole organism and can indicate the existence of cancer and other diseases. PL profiling with MS opens new prospects to assess alterations of PLs in cancer, screening specific biomarkers and provide a basis for the development of novel therapeutic strategies. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Mass Spec Rev 37:107‐138, 2018

中文翻译：

---

磷脂作为癌症生物标记物：基于质谱的分析

脂质，特别是磷脂（PL），是细胞膜的关键成分。PL在细胞中起着重要而多样的作用，例如化学能存储，细胞信号传导，细胞膜以及组织中的细胞间相互作用。所有这些细胞过程都与经历转化，癌症进展和转移的细胞有关。因此，很可能在细胞生理学中某些类型的PL存在于癌细胞和组织中。质谱软电离技术，电喷雾电离（ESI）和基质辅助激光解吸/电离（MALDI）在蛋白质组学领域已建立完善，已用于癌症研究中的脂质组分析。这篇综述主要关注质谱（MS）在ESI‐MS和MALDI‐MS的应用中在癌细胞，组织，血液和尿液中存在的各种PL的结构表征，分子组成和关键作用中的重要性，以及它们的重要性解决与癌症有关的问题，以及开发基于PL的新型生物标志物的挑战。PL的概况分析有助于合理化其在生物系统中的功能，还将提供诊断信息，以阐明控制癌症，糖尿病和神经退行性疾病的机制。MS方法对细胞PL的研究表明，在与PL相关的各种不同癌症疾病的生物标志物的药物发现和开发中，有关各种癌症疾病和临床应用的新见解。组织中的PL分析 细胞和体液也反映了整个生物体的一般状况，并可能表明癌症和其他疾病的存在。MS的PL谱分析为评估癌症中PL的变化，筛选特定的生物标志物打开了新的前景，并为开发新型治疗策略提供了基础。©2016 Wiley Periodicals，Inc.质谱修订37：107‐138,2018年