Cumulative evidence shows that
eicosanoids such as
prostaglandins,
leukotrienes,
thromboxanes and hydroxy
eicosatetraenoic acids play an important role in associating
inflammation with human
colorectal cancer (CRC). In this study an ultra-pressure liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC/MS/MS) method was developed and validated for the targeted profiling of eight relevant
eicosanoids and the major metabolic precursor,
arachidonic acid (AA), in human colon. Multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) experiments were performed in negative electrospray ionization mode. The metabolites were separated using a C(18) column consisting of 1.7 µm
ethylene-bridged hybrid particles (100 × 2.1 mm i.d.) and gradient elution (50 to 95% of
solvent B) with a mobile phase comprising water (0.1%
formic acid) [
solvent A] and
acetonitrile (0.1%
formic acid) [
solvent B] at a flow rate of 0.4 mL/min. The analysis time for each sample was 5.5 min. Our UPLC/MS/MS method demonstrated satisfactory validation results in terms of selectivity, sensitivity, matrix effect, linearity, extraction efficiency, intra- and inter-day precision, accuracy and autosampler stability. The method was applied for the clinical profiling of matched pairs of cancerous and normal colon mucosae obtained from eight
colorectal cancer patients. Endogenous levels of AA and selected
eicosanoids such as
prostaglandin E(2) (
PGE(2)),
prostacyclin (PGI(2)) [assayed as its stable hydrolytic product 6-keto-prostaglandin(1α) (6-k
PGF(1α))] and 12-hydroxy-5Z,8Z,10E,14Z-eicosatetraenoic
acid (12-HETE) were found to be significantly different (p <0.05; paired t-test) between cancerous and normal mucosae.