A Comparison Study on the Metabolites in PC-3, RWPE-1, and Chrysin-Treated PC-3 Cells

Prostate cancer is frequently diagnosed and the leading cause of death in men worldwide. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood tests and biopsies are the primary methods for diagnosing prostate cancer; however, their accuracy is less than 50%. Therefore, there is a need to develop diagnostic tests that minimize patient discomfort during examination and adequate biomarkers that are more accurate, sensitive, and specific for the detection of prostate cancer. This study investigated the application of metabolomics to identify biomarkers in prostate cancer biofluids. In addition, changes in prostate cancer metabolite levels induced by chrysin, a natural anticancer compound, were evaluated and compared with those in non-treated prostate cancer cells. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS)-based metabolomic profiling was performed to investigate the differences in metabolic alterations among prostate cancer, normal prostate, and chrysin-treated prostate cancer cells. Pairwise comparisons of the extracellular fluid metabolomes were performed using principal component analysis (PCA), partial least squares–discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), and Student’s t-test. The results revealed significantly different patterns among the metabolite groups, including alcohols, amino acids, carboxylic acids, organic acids, sugars, and urea. The RWPE-1- and chrysin-treated PC-3 (PC-3 Chr) cell groups showed similar tendencies for 23 metabolites, while the groups showed significant differences from the PC-3 group. Most amino acids showed higher concentrations in PC-3 cells than in the normal cell line RWPE-1 cells and PC-3 Chr cells. Our results revealed that GC-MS might be an effective diagnostic tool to detect prostate cancer and contribute to finding new tumor markers for prostate cancer as the basis for new ideas.