Abstract: Metabolomics is a new discipline in the "post-genomics" period, which constitutes the core of system biology together with genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics. Metabolomics analyzes the dynamic changes of all endogenous small metabolites in physiological or pathological state of biological systems in order to explore the relationship between endogenous small molecules and disease development. At present, metabolomics is widely used in many fields, including screening of tumor markers, disease diagnosis, new drug research and development. In recent years, domestic and foreign scholars have analyzed the characteristics of the metabolite profile of breast cancer by metabolomics techniques, and screened out valuable potential markers, which opened up a new way for the prevention, early diagnosis and individualized treatment of breast cancer. These potential metabolic markers of breast cancer are reviewed in this article.

Key words: breast neoplasms, biological markers, mass spectrometry, metabolomics, screening