Glycoprotein biomarkers for the detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer (PaC) shows a clear tendency to increase in the next years and therefore represents an important health and social challenge. Currently, there is an important need to find biomarkers for PaC early detection because the existing ones are not useful for that purpose. Recent studies have indicated that there is a large window of time for PaC early detection, which opens the possibility to find early biomarkers that could greatly improve the dismal prognosis of this tumor. The present manuscript reviews the state of the art of the existing PaC biomarkers. It focuses on the anomalous glycosylation process and its role in PaC. Glycan structures of glycoconjugates such as glycoproteins are modified in tumors and these modifications can be detected in biological fluids of the cancer patients. Several studies have found serum glycoproteins with altered glycan chains in PaC patients, but they have not shown enough specificity for PaC. To find more specific cancer glycoproteins we propose to analyze the glycan moieties of a battery of glycoproteins that have been reported to increase in PaC tissues and that can also be found in serum. The combination of these new candidate glycoproteins with their aberrant glycosylation together with the existing biomarkers could result in a panel, which would expect to give better results as a new tool for early diagnosis of PaC and to monitor the disease.

High glucose microenvironment accelerates tumor growth via SREBP1-autophagy axis in pancreatic cancer

“…In general, cancer cells require a considerable nutrient supply for their rapid growth, and glucose has been proven to be their main source of energy [16]. Due to its extensive desmoplastic reaction, PC is characterized by hypovascularization [17], and pancreatic cancer cells are accordingly more dependent on a high level of glycolysis rather than oxidative phosphorylation [17–19].…”

Establishment and Investigation of a Multiple Gene Expression Signature to Predict Long-Term Survival in Pancreatic Cancer

“…Currently, blood-based CA 19-9 is widely used for diagnosis and prognosis in PC patients; however, due to its low sensitivity and specificity, clinical prediction is not satisfactory. Furthermore, there are CA 19-9-negative patients due to limited Lewis antigen [ 26 ].…”

Rise of Systems Glycobiology and Personalized Glycomedicine: Why and How to Integrate Glycomics with Multiomics Science?

“…The study enabled one to assess specific glycosylation patterns in patients and also suggested therapeutics targets, such as glycoenzymes (Palmigiano et al, 2016). Simultaneous measurement of specific glycoforms combined with protein levels has been suggested to increase the diagnostic potential in pancreatic cancer (Llop et al, 2018). The majority of FDA-approved protein tumor markers currently used in clinical practice are glycoproteins, many of them showing glycosylation alterations in cancer (Lauc et al, 2016).…”