Aberrant glycosylation
is a hallmark of cancer found during tumorigenesis
and tumor progression. Lung cancer (LC) induced by oncogene mutations
has been detected in the patient’s saliva, and saliva glycosylation
has been altered. Saliva contains highly glycosylated glycoproteins,
the characteristics of which may be related to various diseases. Therefore,
elucidating cancer-specific glycosylation in the saliva of healthy,
non-cancer, and cancer patients can reveal whether tumor glycosylation
has unique characteristics for early diagnosis. In this work, we used
a solid-phase chemoenzymatic method to study the glycosylation of
saliva glycoproteins in clinical specimens. The results showed that
the α1,6-core fucosylation of glycoproteins was increased in
cancer patients, whereas α1,2 or α1,3 fucosylation was
significantly increased. We further analyzed the expression of fucosyltransferases
responsible for α1,2, α1,3, and α1,6 fucosylation.
The fucosylation of the saliva of cancer patients is drastically different
from that of non-cancer or health controls. These results indicate
that the glycoform of saliva fucosylation distinguishes LC from other
diseases, and this feature has the potential to diagnose lung adenocarcinoma.