N-glycan,a biomarker in current cancer diagnosis

N-glycan,a biomarker in current cancer diagnosis

摘要

Abstract Glycosylation, links the glycan chains to protein or lipid, is the most common and complex post-translational modifications of proteins.One of the important functions of glycans is to maintain the ordered social life of each cell in multicellular organisms. Glycosylation is sensitive to the biochemical environment leading to the alternation of glycan chains under physiological condition and specific diseases such as cancer. Up to date, cancer and other lethal diseases could not be diagnosed at early stage because of the traditional marker’s low sensitivity and less specificity. Recent years, the development of glycan profiling technologies has offered technology support for understanding the complex glycan structures and has increased great interest in applying the technology for cancer studies. In this regard, to identify the glycans as the potential biomarkers of cancer has become an important direction for clinical cancer diagnosis. This review summarizes the current research on finding the glycans as new cancer biomarkers.