Lipidomics in breast cancer

Abstract

The prevalence of breast cancer within industrialized populations and the accessibility of tissue for research have meant that genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic studies have often focused on breast cancer. This has led to major advances in the understanding of this disease and to findings that have been translated to many other types of cancer. Like other common cancers, breast cancer shows a lipogenic phenotype, meaning that significant quantities of lipids are synthesized and stored within breast cancer cells. As the importance of this lipogenic phenotype is becoming better appreciated, studies are beginning to focus upon how lipogenesis is regulated in breast cancer and the critical genes and pathways involved. Lipidomic studies have also begun to characterize lipid profiles in breast cancer cells and tissues and to study the biological consequences of these altered profiles. This chapter will provide an overview of lipid biology in human breast cancer, focusing upon our current understanding of breast cancer lipogenesis, how this contributes to tumor formation and progression, what is understood of its molecular basis, and how the techniques of lipidomics are beginning to be applied to this disease.