Serum lipid profile discriminates patients with early lung cancer from healthy controls

•The value of MALDI-based profiling of serum lipidome as a tool for the early detection of lung cancer was investigated.•Several components with abundances different between early lung cancer patients and healthy high-risk smokers were revealed.•Discriminatory components allowed for the development of an effective cancer classifier with AUC=0.88.•Reduced level of a few lysophosphatidylcholines, including LPC18:2, was confirmed in samples from cancer patients.