A rapid increase in lysophospholipids after geranylgeranoic acid treatment in human hepatoma-derived HuH-7 cells revealed by metabolomics analysis

Geranylgeranoic acid (GGA) was developed as a preventative agent against second primary hepatoma, and was reported to induce cell death in human hepatoma cells via Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4)-mediated pyroptosis. We recently reported that GGA is enzymatically biosynthesized from mevalonic acid in human hepatoma-derived HuH-7 cells and that endogenous GGA is found in most rat organs including the liver. An unbiased metabolomics analysis of ice-cold 50% acetonitrile extracts from control and GGA-treated cells was performed in this study to characterize the intracellular metabolic changes in GGA-induced pyroptosis and to analyze their relationship with the mechanism of GGA-induced cell death. The total positive ion chromatograms of the cellular extracts in ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry were apparently unchanged after GGA treatment, but an orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis score plot clearly discriminated the intracellular metabolite profiles of GGA-treated cells from that of control cells. S-plot analysis revealed 15 potential biomarkers up-regulated by 24-h GGA treatment according to their variable importance in the projection value of more than 1, and the subsequent metabolomics analysis identified nine of these metabolites as a group of lysophospholipids containing lysophosphatidylcholine with C16:0, C20:4, or C20:3 fatty acids. The possible roles of these lysophospholipids in GGA-induced pyroptosis are discussed.