Endogenous and xenobiotic metabolite profiling of liver extracts from SCID and chimeric humanized mice following repeated oral administration of troglitazone.

1. Metabonomic analysis, via a combination of untargeted and targeted liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and untargeted (1)H NMR spectroscopy-based metabolite profiling, was performed on aqueous (AQ) and organic liver extracts from control (SCID) and chimeric humanized (PXB) mice dosed with troglitazone at 0, 300 and 600 mg/kg/day for seven days. 2. LC-MS analysis of AQ liver extracts showed a more "human-like" profile for troglitazone metabolites for PXB, compared with SCID, mice. 3. LC-MS detected differences in endogenous metabolites, particularly lipid species in dosed mice, including elevated triacylglycerols and 1-alkyl,2-acylglycerophosphates as well as lowered diacylglycerophosphocholines and 1-alkyl,2-acylglycerophosphocholines for PXB compared with SCID mouse liver extracts. Following drug administration changes in the relative proportions of the ions for various unsaturated fatty acids were observed for both types of mouse, some of which were specific to PXB or SCID mice. 4. (1)H NMR spectroscopy revealed that AQ PXB mouse liver extracts had elevated amounts of inosine, fumarate, creatine, aspartate, trimethylamine N-oxide, glycerophosphocholine, phosphocholine, choline, glutamine, glutamate, acetate, alanine and lactate relative to SCID mice and decreased histidine, glycogen, α- and ß-glucose, taurine, and glutathione. Increased uracil and tyrosine concentrations were detected for PXB mice on troglitazone administration. 5. Metabonomic profiling thus showed clear differences between humanized and SCID mice, including after administration of troglitazone.

Global metabolite profiling of human colorectal cancer xenografts in mice using HPLC-MS/MS.

Reversed-phase gradient LC-MS was used to perform untargeted metabonomic analysis on extracts of human colorectal cancer (CRC) cell lines (COLO 205, HT-29, HCT 116 and SW620) subcutaneously implanted into age-matched athymic nude male mice to study small molecule metabolic profiles and examine possible correlations with human cancer biopsies. Following high mass accuracy data analysis using MS and MS/MS, metabolites were identified by searching against major metabolite databases including METLIN, MASSBANK, The Human Metabolome Database, PubChem, Biospider, LipidMaps and KEGG. HT-29 and COLO 205 tumor xenografts showed a distribution of metabolites that differed from SW620 and HCT 116 xenografts (predominantly on the basis of relative differences in the amounts of amino acids and lipids detected). This finding is consistent with NMR-based analysis of human colorectal tissue, where the metabolite profiles of HT-29 tumors exhibit the greatest similarity to human rectal cancer tissue with respect to changes in the relative amounts of lipids and choline-containing compounds. As the metabolic signatures of cancer cells result from oncogene-directed metabolic reprogramming, the HT-29 xenografts in mice may prove to be a useful model to further study the tumor microenvironment and cancer biology.