Metabolomics and Malignant Tumors of the Digestive Tract

Cancer has profound effects on metabolism that include both rewiring of intracellular metabolism to support uncontrolled proliferation and adaptation to the tumor microenvironment (TME) and alterations in normal tissue metabolism. Such metabolic remodeling generates distinct metabolic traits that facilitate earlier cancer detection, optimize patient stratification in clinical trials, and/or serve as biomarkers of treatment response. Metabolomics is the global analysis of small molecule metabolites used to define these complex metabolic interactions for diagnostic and therapeutic gain. To date, there have been notable advances in metabolomics at the single-cell level (Fig. 4.1). With the development of single-cell, spatial, and in vivo metabolomic approaches, researchers can now conduct comprehensive, unbiased investigations, revealing intricate metabolic heterogeneity at unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution. Aided by metabolomics, studies in malignant tumors of the digestive tract have mapped the unique metabolic fingerprints of tumorigenesis and clarified the functional contribution of these metabolic changes to the establishment and maintenance of malignant transformation.