Discrimination of Basal Cell Carcinoma from Normal Skin Tissue Using High-Resolution Magic Angle Spinning 1H NMR Spectroscopy

High-resolution magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (HR-MAS NMR) spectroscopy is a useful tool for investigating the metabolism of various cancers. Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common skin cancer. However, to our knowledge, data on metabolic profiling of BCC have not been reported in the literature. The objective of the present study was to investigate the metabolic profiling of cutaneous BCC using HR-MAS ¹H NMR spectroscopy. HR-MAS ¹H NMR spectroscopy was used to analyze the metabolite profile and metabolite intensity of histopathologically confirmed BCC tissues and normal skin tissue (NST) samples. The metabolic intensity normalized to the total spectral intensities in BCC and NST was compared, and multivariate analysis was performed with orthogonal partial least-squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA). P values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Univariate analysis revealed 9 metabolites that showed statistically significant difference between BCC and NST. In multivariate analysis, the OPLS-DA models built with the HR-MAS NMR metabolic profiles revealed a clear separation of BCC from NST. The receiver operating characteristic curve generated from the results revealed an excellent discrimination of BCC from NST with an area under the curve (AUC) value of 0.961. The present study demonstrated that the metabolite profile and metabolite intensity differ between BCC and NST, and that HR-MAS ¹H NMR spectroscopy can be a valuable tool in the diagnosis of BCC.