Tissue and serum metabolomic phenotyping for diagnosis and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma.

More than two-thirds of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cannot receive curative therapy and have poor survival due to late diagnosis and few prognostic directions. In our study, nontargeted and targeted metabolomics analyses were conducted by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to characterize metabolic features of HCC and identify diagnostic and prognostic biomarker candidate incorporating liver tissue and serum metabolites. A total of 552 subjects, including 432 with liver tissue and 120 with serum specimens, were recruited in China. In the discovery cohort, a series of 138 metabolites were identified to discriminate HCC tissues from matched nontumor tissues. Retinol presented with the highest area under the curve (AUC) of 0.991 and associated with Edmondson grade. In the validation cohort, all metabolites in retinol metabolism pathway were examined and the levels of retinol and retinal in tumor tissue and serum decreased in the order of normal to cirrhosis to HCC of Edmondson Grades I to IV. Retinol and retinal levels could also differentiate between HCC and cirrhosis, with AUCs of 0.996 and 0.994, respectively, in tissue and 0.812 and 0.744, respectively, in serum. The AUC of the combined retinol and retinal panel in serum was 0.852. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression identified this panel as an independent predictor for HCC and showed that low expression of retinol and retinal correlated with decreased survival time. In conclusion, the retinol metabolic signature had considerable diagnostic and prognostic value for identifying HCC patients who would benefit from prompt therapy and optimal prognostic direction.

Gold-catalyzed reaction of enynols by a dimerization-fragmentation process: an expeditious assembly of enyne molecular architecture.

Intermolecular condensation reaction of 1,3,5-triarylenynols catalyzed by gold as Lewis acid was reported for the first time; the products with unique structures have potential applications in materials chemistry, and tandem reaction product has been used to detect mercury ions as an organic molecular probe.

Arylation and vinylation of alkenes based on unusual sequential semipinacol rearrangement/Grob fragmentation of allylic alcohols.

Alkenes can be stereoselectively arylated and vinylated without transition-metal catalyst under mild conditions through an interesting NBS-promoted semipinacol rearrangement and a subsequent unusual NaOH-mediated Grob fragmentation.

Au(I)-catalyzed rearrangement reaction of propargylic aziridine: synthesis of trisubstituted and cycloalkene-fused pyrroles.

A rearrangement reaction of propargylic aziridine, catalyzed by PPh(3)AuCl/AgOTf, forming trisubstituted and cycloalkene-fused pyrroles is described which involves an unusual tandem cyclization/ring-opening/Wagner-Meerwein process. The unique structures of the products demonstrated its potential applications for synthesizing structurally diverse alkaloids.