Introduction

Lipid metabolism has been accepted as a major metabolic pathway that is involved in many aspects of cancer cell pathogenesis. Attempts to understand the role of different lipids in cancer physiology depend on the ability to accurately monitor alterations in lipid composition at cell level due to the diversity of lipid classes.

Objectives

Mastocytoma and mammary gland tumor are common tumors in pet veterinary medicine. We investigated the differences in fatty acid profile of tumor and normal tissue sample in an attempt to get better insight into the lipid metabolism of tumor cells as well as to improve grading of studied tumors.

Methods

Paired samples of tumor and adjacent non-tumor tissue were isolated from 21 mastocytomas and 37 mammary tumors. After the pathohistological examination of tumor and non-tumor samples, fatty acid profile was determined by GC-MS.

Results

All tumors showed significant difference compared to the normal tissue. The most significant differences were the increased content in C20:4n6 in both tumors, the increased content in 18:0, 18:1n9, 22:4n6 and 22:5n3 for mastocytoma and the increased content of 18:1n7, 20:3n6, C22:4n6 and C22:5n6 for the mammary tumors.

Conclusions

These preliminary results showed significant variations in fatty acid profile between tumor and non-tumor tissue as well as within tumor tissues depending on tumor type. Further researches should address the correlation between alterations in the fatty acid profile of different lipid classes and tumor prognosis.

This work has been supported by the Croatian Science Foundation in the project IP-06-2016-3163 awarded to Kristina Starčević.