Clinical application of quantitative glycomics

Abstract

Introduction: Aberrant glycosylation has been associated with many diseases. Decades of research activities have reported many reliable glycan biomarkers of different diseases which enable effective disease diagnostics and prognostics. However, none of the glycan markers have been approved for clinical diagnosis. Thus, a review of these studies is needed to guide the successful clinical translation. Area covered: In this review, we describe and discuss advances in analytical methods enabling clinical glycan biomarker discovery, focusing only on studies of released glycans. This review also summarizes the different glycobiomarkers identified for cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, hepatitis B and C, and other diseases. Expert commentary: Along with the development of techniques in quantitative glycomics, more glycans or glycan patterns have been reported as better potential biomarkers of different diseases and proved to have greater diagnostic/diagnostic sensitivity and specificity than existing markers. However, to successfully apply glycan markers in clinical diagnosis, more studies and verifications on large biological cohorts need to be performed. In addition, faster and more efficient glycomic strategies need to be developed to shorten the turnaround time. Thus, glycan biomarkers have an immense chance to be used in clinical prognosis and diagnosis of many diseases in the near future.

Integrated Transcriptomics, Proteomics, and Glycomics Reveals the Association between Up-regulation of Sialylated N-glycans/Integrin and Breast Cancer Brain Metastasis

“…Several highly sialylated glycans including HexNAc 5 Hex 6 DeoxyHex 1 NeuAc 1 , HexNAc 5 Hex 6 DeoxyHex 1 NeuAc 2 , HexNAc 5 Hex 6 DeoxyHex 1 NeuAc 3 , HexNAc 3 Hex 4 DeoxyHex 1 NeuAc 1 , HexNAc 4 Hex 4 DeoxyHex 1 NeuAc 1 , HexNAc 4 Hex 5 DeoxyHex 1 NeuAc 1 , and HexNAc 4 Hex 5 DeoxyHex 1 NeuAc 2 were observed to be overexpressed in 231BR, suggesting an association of these glycans with breast cancer brain metastasis. The increase of sialylation level and some of the sialylated glycans such as HexNAc 5 Hex 6 DeoxyHex 1 NeuAc 2 have been observed in breast cancer progression 47 . In addition to breast cancer progression, in this study, the increase of sialylation and aforementioned seven glycans could be considered as potential indicators for breast cancer brain metastasis.…”

Defining the genetic control of human blood plasma N-glycome using genome-wide association study

“…Beyond that, aberrant glycosylation is involved in key pathological steps of tumor development and is even considered a new hallmark of cancer (15)(16)(17). Glycans are considered as potential therapeutic targets (18) and biomarkers for early diagnosis and disease prognosis (19)(20)(21)(22), which makes glycobiology a promising field for future clinical applications. An example of glycoprotein biomarker is AFP-L3-the fucosylated fraction of alpha-fetoprotein-that was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a diagnostic marker of primary hepatocellular carcinoma (21).…”

Characterization of glycan isomers using magnetic carbon nanoparticles as a MALDI co-matrix

“…The utility of MCNPs was then investigated in the glycomic study of N -glycans derived from human blood serum. Human blood serum contains proteins with sophisticated glycosylation, and its profiling plays an essential role in biomarker discovery, and disease diagnosis and prognosis 7,16,18,80,81. Isomers of reduced glycans were first separated by a PGC-nanoLC system and then analyzed with MALDI using MCNPs as a co-matrix.…”