Targeted lipidomics meets transcriptomics: how cinobufagin rewires fatty acid, sphingolipid, and glycerophospholipid metabolism to combat hepatoma cell growth

Description

Wanjun Shao, Congying Yu, and three colleagues trace how a toad-venom compound rewires fat metabolism inside liver cancer cells, in a paper published in two thousand twenty-five. The compound is cinobufagin, the main active ingredient of the traditional Chinese medicine Chansu, known to fight tumors by routes that were not fully mapped.

Liver cancer is common, hard to catch early, and deadly late, and its growth is tied to abnormal lipid metabolism. The team profiled the cells' lipids with targeted metabolomics, class by class: fatty acids, sphingolipids, and glycerophospholipids. They layered gene expression data on top, integrating transcriptomics with the lipid maps. The combined view identifies the pathways cinobufagin actually moves. Knowing the metabolic wiring a drug disturbs can suggest combinations and biomarkers. The study brings modern omics bookkeeping to a traditional remedy.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC12926493