Cancer Glycobiomarkers Facing Precision Oncology

A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Biomarkers".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2022) | Viewed by 7122

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Departamento Ciências da Vida, Nova School of Science and Technology (FCT-Nova), Nova University of Lisbon, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal
Interests: glycobiology; cancer; congenital disorders of glycosylation; cancer immunotherapy; antibodies
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Guest Editor
Portuguese Institute of Oncology of Porto, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal
Interests: glycomics; glycoproteomics; glycoproteogenomics; oncobiology; cancer therapy; precision oncology; cancer biomarkers; systems biology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Glycosylation is a highly dynamic and controlled event resulting from the concerted action of glycosyltransferases, glycosidases, and substrates. Glycans, alone or in the form of glycoconjugates (glycoproteins, proteoglycans, glycolipids), are relevant components of the cells and directly contribute to several biological events.

It is well established that glycan diversity is much higher than other biological molecules. This so-called glycocode changes dramatically with malignant transformation and evolves with disease progression and dissemination, impacting all cancer hallmarks. Namely, abnormal glycosylation alters cancer cell signaling, modulating proliferation, migration, and invasion. Glycans also mediate tumor recognition by immune cells through interaction with glycan binding lectins and other receptors, playing a key role in immune evasion in cancer. Thus, understanding cancer glycobiology is a prerequisite to understanding cancer biology.

Over the past decade, high throughput analytical tools have been used to comprehensively interrogate the glycome and glycoproteome of cancer cells, providing a better understanding of their role in health and disease. Some glycoforms have shown tremendous potential for precision oncology, improving early diagnosis, prognosis, risk stratification, and providing markers of treatment response. This has fostered advances in cancer detection tools, stratification models, novel targeted therapies, and immunotherapy, including glycoconjugate vaccines and CAR-Ts.

This Special Issue welcomes works that may further contribute to this rationale, exploring cancer-associated glycans and glycoconjugates in the context of precision oncology, namely non-invasive cancer detection, diagnosis, patient stratification, response to treatment, and innovative therapeutics.

Prof. Paula A. Videira
Dr. José Alexandre Ferreira
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 4265 KiB  
Article
Use of Glycoproteins—Prostate-Specific Membrane Antigen and Galectin-3 as Primary Tumor Markers and Therapeutic Targets in the Management of Metastatic Prostate Cancer
by Satish Sharma, Katherine Cwiklinski, Donald E. Sykes, Supriya D. Mahajan, Kent Chevli, Stanley A. Schwartz and Ravikumar Aalinkeel
Cancers 2022, 14(11), 2704; https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers14112704 - 30 May 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2509
Abstract
Galectins and prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA) are glycoproteins that are functionally implicated in prostate cancer (CaP). We undertook this study to analyze the “PSMA-galectin pattern” of the human CaP microenvironment with the overarching goal of selecting novel-molecular targets for prognostic and therapeutic [...] Read more.
Galectins and prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA) are glycoproteins that are functionally implicated in prostate cancer (CaP). We undertook this study to analyze the “PSMA-galectin pattern” of the human CaP microenvironment with the overarching goal of selecting novel-molecular targets for prognostic and therapeutic purposes. We examined CaP cells and biopsy samples representing different stages of the disease and found that PSMA, Gal-1, Gal-3, and Gal-8 are the most abundantly expressed glycoproteins. In contrast, other galectins such as Gal-2, 4–7, 9–13, were uniformly expressed at lower levels across all cell lines. However, biopsy samples showed markedly higher expression of PSMA, Gal-1 and Gal-3. Independently PSA and Gleason score at diagnosis correlated with the expression of PSMA, Gal-3. Additionally, the combined index of PSMA and Gal-3 expression positively correlated with Gleason score and was a better predictor of tumor aggressiveness. Together, our results recognize a tightly regulated “PSMA-galectin- pattern” that accompanies disease in CaP and highlight a major role for the combined PSMA and Gal-3 inhibitors along with standard chemotherapy for prostate cancer treatment. Inhibitor combination studies show enzalutamide (ENZ), 2-phosphonomethyl pentanedioic acid (2-PMPA), and GB1107 as highly cytotoxic for LNCaP and LNCaP-KD cells, while Docetaxel (DOC) + GB1107 show greater efficacy in PC-3 cells. Overall, 2-PMPA and GB1107 demonstrate synergistic cytotoxic effects with ENZ and DOC in various CaP cell lines. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cancer Glycobiomarkers Facing Precision Oncology)
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13 pages, 1336 KiB  
Article
Increased Circulating Levels of Galectin Proteins in Patients with Breast, Colon, and Lung Cancer
by Bailey B. Blair, Avery T. Funkhouser, Jane L. Goodwin, Alexander M. Strigenz, Basil H. Chaballout, Julie C. Martin, Connie M. Arthur, Christopher Ronald Funk, W. Jeffery Edenfield and Anna V. Blenda
Cancers 2021, 13(19), 4819; https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers13194819 - 26 Sep 2021
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 3703
Abstract
Galectins are proteins with high-affinity β-galactoside-binding sites that function in a variety of signaling pathways through interactions with glycoproteins. The known contributions of galectins-1, -3, -7, -8, and -9 to angiogenesis, metastasis, cell division, and evasion of immune destruction led us to investigate [...] Read more.
Galectins are proteins with high-affinity β-galactoside-binding sites that function in a variety of signaling pathways through interactions with glycoproteins. The known contributions of galectins-1, -3, -7, -8, and -9 to angiogenesis, metastasis, cell division, and evasion of immune destruction led us to investigate the circulating levels of these galectins in cancer patients. This study compares galectin concentrations by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) from each stage of breast, lung, and colon cancer. Galectins-1 and -7, which share a prototype structure, were found to have statistically significant increases in breast and lung cancer. Of the tandem-repeat galectins, galectin-8 showed no statistically significant change in these cancer types, but galectin-9 was increased in colon and lung cancer. Galectin-3 is the only chimera-type galectin and was increased in all stages of breast, colon, and lung cancer. In conclusion, there were significant differences in the galectin levels in patients with these cancers compared with healthy controls, and galectin levels did not significantly change from stage to stage. These findings suggest that further research on the roles of galectins early in disease pathogenesis may lead to novel indications for galectin inhibitors. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cancer Glycobiomarkers Facing Precision Oncology)
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