Lectins: an effective tool for screening of potential cancer biomarkers

Abstract

In recent years, the use of lectins for screening of potential biomarkers has gained increased importance in cancer research, given the development in glycobiology that highlights altered structural changes of glycans in cancer associated processes. Lectins, having the properties of recognizing specific carbohydrate moieties of glycoconjugates,

Structure-function and application of plant lectins in disease biology and immunity

“…But here, plant-derived lectins (e.g. PNA) are used as a capturing as well as detecting reagent (in sandwich ELLA) instead of antibody (Hashim et al, 2017). The intensity of enzyme-conjugated lectin, determines the levels of the coated glycol-conjugates.…”

“…This technique has high through-put potential and other advantages like it is easy to perform, very cost effective and requires minute amount of sample. This technique helps in in situ characterization and quantification of biofilm exo-polysaccharides as lectins specifically bind to saccharide residues that are most frequently encountered in biofilms matrices (Hashim et al, 2017).…”

“…Lectin blotting technique is an extension of western blotting where lectins with carbohydrate binding modules are used instead of antibodies (Hashim et al, 2017;Shan et al, 2001). Varieties of glycan structures have been detected using glycan specific lectin probes because of its potential for visualization of small amount of protein with high specificity and sensitivity.…”

“…Immobilized-lectin affinity chromatography is a molecular-based technique for the enrichment of glycoprotein separation in the field of glycomics research (Hashim et al, 2017). This is the most widely employed separation technique that has been developed, based on the interaction between the immobilized plant lectins such as immobilized CGB or Con A (Hashim et al, 2017) onto the chosen matrix and its carbohydrate ligand (Hage et al, 2012). Chromatography column is packed with a lectin-conjugated gel matrix and the process is carried out with the washing of non-binding proteins as well as elution of the bound glycoproteins using specific carbohydrate solution.…”

“…Furthermore, this technique is broadly applicable for the purification as well as the characterization of proteins bearing O-linked 3 A. Mishra, et al Food and Chemical Toxicology 134 (2019) 110827 oligosaccharides (Hashim et al, 2017;Pang et al, 2010).…”