
A single drop of blood can reveal the complex metabolic landscape of cancer. The cover image symbolizes the serum metabolome of patients with bladder cancer (BC) and its dynamic changes during platinum-based chemotherapy. Using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) metabolomics, our study identifies a distinct metabolic signature in patients compared with healthy controls, involving pathways related to glycolysis, amino acid metabolism, fatty acid metabolism, and purine metabolism. Longitudinal monitoring during treatment highlights significant variations in metabolites such as acetate, acetone, hypoxanthine, and trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO). These findings suggest that circulating metabolites may serve as minimally invasive biomarkers to better understand tumor biology and potentially predict response to chemotherapy in BC. This cover image was generated using AI-assisted tools (Canva). The authors confirm that it contains no identifiable human likenesses, copyrighted elements, or misleading content.
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