Studies on the role of goat heart galectin-1 as a tool for detecting post-malignant changes in glycosylation pattern

Abstract

Galectins are mammalian lectins established to play a crucial role in the progression of various cancer types by the virtue of their differential expression in normal and cancerous cells. In the present study, goat heart galectin-1 (GHG-1) was purified and investigated for its potential role in the detection of post-malignant changes in glycosylation pattern. When exposed to superoxide radicals generated from a pyrogallol auto-oxidation system, GHG-1 treated erythrocyte suspension released higher amount of oxyhemoglobin than the unagglutinated erythrocytes. The extent of erythrocyte hemolysis was found to be directly proportional to concentrations of hypochlorous acid. GHG-1 was used to detect the change in the β-galactoside expression pattern in erythrocyte membrane from human donors suffering from prostate and breast cancer. No significant change was observed in the hemolysis of lectin agglutinated erythrocytes collected from pre-operated breast cancer patients, whereas significant increase was observed in normal healthy control and post-operated samples. Findings of this study proclaim GHG-1 as an important tool for the detection of post-malignant changes in glycosylation pattern.

Galectins—Potential Therapeutic Targets for Neurodegenerative Disorders

“…The Galectin family has 16 members from Gal-1 to Gal-16, which can be divided into three subfamilies, based on the organization of the CRD [ 3 ]. Gals can bind branched glycans on glycoconjugates, resulting in lattice formation and lipid raft clustering [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. These proteins can tie to sugar particles and can be present on different proteins inside or on the cell surface [ 9 ].…”