Abstract
Recent translational studies in cancer have produced a wealth of evidence to support an association between sphingolipid metabolism and clinical outcomes, which underscores the clinical importance of sphingolipid-related biomarkers in cancer diagnosis and prognosis. Importantly, circulating levels of bioactive sphingolipids were demonstrated to correlate with patient survival and treatment response in different tumour types, which could provide novel non-invasive cancer biomarkers. Here, we give a comprehensive overview of recent findings on bioactive sphingolipid species and protein regulators of their metabolism and signalling as novel potential biomarkers for risk assessment, prevention and prediction of treatment response in several types of solid cancers, including prostate, liver, pancreatic, breast and colon cancer, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and gliomas. Finally, we critically discuss current issues in clinical translation of sphingolipid biomarkers and give our perspective on how these problems could be handled to facilitate implementation of sphingolipid-based diagnostics into clinical practice.
Footnotes
Funding
This work was supported by the University of Rijeka under Grant number 13.11.2.1.12. to Mirela Sedic and 13.11.1.1.11 to Sandra Kraljević Pavelić.
Disclosure Statement
The Authors declare no conflict of interest in regard to this article.
Ethics Approval
This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the Authors.
- Received October 29, 2018.
- Revision received November 19, 2018.
- Accepted November 21, 2018.
- Copyright© 2019, International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. George J. Delinasios), All rights reserved