Metabolites 2012, 2(4), 913-939; doi:10.3390/metabo2040913
Tumor-Associated Glycans and Their Role in Gynecological Cancers: Accelerating Translational Research by Novel High-Throughput Approaches
Gynecological Research Group, Department of Biomedicine, University Hospital Basel, Hebelstrasse 20, 4031 Basel, Switzerland
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 31 October 2012 / Revised: 8 November 2012 / Accepted: 9 November 2012 / Published: 14 November 2012
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Glycomics and Glycoproteomics)
Abstract
Glycans are important partners in many biological processes, including carcinogenesis. The rapidly developing field of functional glycomics becomes one of the frontiers of biology and biomedicine. Aberrant glycosylation of proteins and lipids occurs commonly during malignant transformation and leads to the expression of specific tumor-associated glycans. The appearance of aberrant glycans on carcinoma cells is typically associated with grade, invasion, metastasis and overall poor prognosis. Cancer-associated carbohydrates are mostly located on the surface of cancer cells and are therefore potential diagnostic biomarkers. Currently, there is increasing interest in cancer-associated aberrant glycosylation, with growing numbers of characteristic cancer targets being detected every day. Breast and ovarian cancer are the most common and lethal malignancies in women, respectively, and potential glycan biomarkers hold promise for early detection and targeted therapies. However, the acceleration of research and comprehensive multi-target investigation of cancer-specific glycans could only be successfully achieved with the help of a combination of novel high-throughput glycomic approaches.Keywords:
carbohydrate; malignancy; anti-glycan antibodies; tumor marker; microarray; glycomics; breast cancer; ovarian cancer
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0).
Scifeed alert for new publications
Never miss any articles matching your research from any publisher- Get alerts for new papers matching your research
- Find out the new papers from selected authors
- Updated daily for 49'000+ journals and 6000+ publishers
- Define your Scifeed now
Share & Cite This Article
MDPI and ACS Style
Pochechueva, T.; Jacob, F.; Fedier, A.; Heinzelmann-Schwarz, V. Tumor-Associated Glycans and Their Role in Gynecological Cancers: Accelerating Translational Research by Novel High-Throughput Approaches. Metabolites 2012, 2, 913-939.
Related Articles
Article Metrics
Comments
[Return to top]
Metabolites
EISSN 2218-1989
Published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland
RSS
E-Mail Table of Contents Alert