Introduction: Gemcitabine is an important component of pancreatic cancer clinical management. Unfortunately, acquired gemcitabine resistance is widespread and there are limitations to predicting and monitoring therapeutic outcomes.
Objective: To investigate the potential of metabolomics to differentiate pancreatic cancer cells that develops resistance or respond to gemcitabine treatment.
Results: We applied 1D 1H and 2D 1H-13C HSQC NMR methods to profile the metabolic signature of pancreatic cancer cells. 13C6-glucose labeling identified 30 key metabolites uniquely altered between wild-type and gemcitabine-resistant cells upon gemcitabine treatment. Gemcitabine resistance was observed to reprogram glucose metabolism and to enhance the pyrimidine synthesis pathway. Myo-inositol, taurine, glycerophosphocholine and creatinine phosphate exhibited a "binary switch" in response to gemcitabine treatment and acquired resistance.
Conclusion: Metabolic differences between naïve and resistant pancreatic cancer cells and, accordingly, their unique responses to gemcitabine treatment were revealed, which may be useful in the clinical setting for monitoring a patient's therapeutic response.
Keywords: Drug resistance; Gemcitabine; NMR metabolomics; Pancreatic cancer.