Urinary Metabolite Diagnostic and Prognostic Liquid Biopsy Biomarkers of Lung Cancer in Nonsmokers and Tobacco Smokers.

Purpose: Nonsmokers account for 10% to 13% of all lung cancer cases in the United States. Etiology is attributed to multiple risk factors including exposure to secondhand smoking, asbestos, environmental pollution, and radon, but these exposures are not within the current eligibility criteria for early lung cancer screening by low-dose CT (LDCT).

Experimental Design: Urine samples were collected from two independent cohorts comprising 846 participants (exploratory cohort) and 505 participants (validation cohort). The cancer urinary biomarkers, creatine riboside (CR) and N-acetylneuraminic acid (NANA), were analyzed and quantified using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to determine if nonsmoker cases can be distinguished from sex and age-matched controls in comparison with tobacco smoker cases and controls, potentially leading to more precise eligibility criteria for LDCT screening.

Results: Urinary levels of CR and NANA were significantly higher and comparable in nonsmokers and tobacco smoker cases than population controls in both cohorts. Receiver operating characteristic analysis for combined CR and NANA levels in nonsmokers of the exploratory cohort resulted in better predictive performance with the AUC of 0.94, whereas the validation cohort nonsmokers had an AUC of 0.80. Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed that high levels of CR and NANA were associated with increased cancer-specific death in nonsmokers as well as tobacco smoker cases in both cohorts.

Conclusions: Measuring CR and NANA in urine liquid biopsies could identify nonsmokers at high risk for lung cancer as candidates for LDCT screening and warrant prospective studies of these biomarkers.