Thomsen-Friedenreich antigen presents as a prognostic factor in colorectal carcinoma

Immunomagnetic enrichment of disseminated tumor cells in bone marrow and blood of breast cancer patients by the Thomsen-Friedenreich-Antigen

“…As we could demonstrate previously, TF is expressed on 98% of DTC-BM [16]. TF has been described as a marker of worse prognosis in several tumor entities like gastric, colon [24], lung [25] or cancer of the cervix uteri [26]. However, TF is immunogenic and can be used for vaccination.…”

The oncofetal Thomsen–Friedenreich carbohydrate antigen in cancer progression

“…In normal epithelium, the Galβ1-3GalNAcα1-Ser/Thr structure is concealed by sialic acids, sulphates or by addition of other sugar chains to form branched and complex O-glycans. In cancer and pre-cancerous conditions such as ulcerative colitis, unsubstituted Galβ1-3GalNAc occurs [5] in about 90% of all human cancers [6,7] including colon [5,[8][9][10], breast [11][12][13], bladder [14,15], prostate [16,17], liver [18], ovary [19] and stomach [20,21]. In many of these cases, the increased TF occurrence correlates with cancer progression and metastasis [22,23].…”

Prognostic impact of Thomsen–Friedenreich tumor antigen and disseminated tumor cells in the bone marrow of breast cancer patients

“…Therefore, one would expect that TF is a marker of worse prognosis. This is indeed the case with gastrointestinal [20,21,39], lung [22], and cervix [23] carcinomas. However, this seems not to be the case with breast cancer, where the present study clearly demonstrates that TF is a marker of better prognosis in all types of survival statistics (DSF, DDFS, and OS).…”

“…On tumor cells MUC1 is posttranslationally modified resulting in incomplete O-glycosylation and exposing the TF epitope. In several tumor entities, like gastric [20], colon [21], lung [22] or cancer of the cervix uteri [23], a correlation between TF expression and negative prognosis could be demonstrated. Yet, its prognostic impact in other tumors, especially in breast cancer, is indeterminate.…”