A lipidomic cell-based assay for studying drug-induced phospholipidosis and steatosis

Phospholipidosis and steatosis are two toxic effects, which course with overaccumulation of different classes of lipids in the liver. MS-based lipidomics has become a powerful tool for the comprehensive determination of lipids. LC-MS lipid profiling of HepG2 cells is proposed as an in vitro assay to study and anticipate phospholipidosis and steatosis. Cells with and without pre-incubation with a mixture of free fatty acids (FFA) (i.e., oleic and palmitic) were exposed to a set of well-known steatogenic and phospholipidogenic compounds. The use of FFA pre-loading accelerated the accumulation of phospholipids thus leading to a better discrimination of phospholipidosis, and magnified the lipid…