Role of lectin microarrays in cancer diagnosis

摘要: The majority of cell differentiation associated tumor markers reported to date are either glycoproteins or glycolipids. Despite there being a large number as candidate for various cancers, only handful approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. Lectins, which bind glycan part glycoproteins, can be exploited identify aberrant glycosylation patterns, in turn would help enhancing specificity cancer diagnosis. Although conventional techniques such HPLC MS have been instrumental performing glycomic analyses, these lack multiplexity. Lectin microarrays proved useful studying multiple lectin-glycan interactions single experiment and, with advances made field, hold promise enabling profiling cancers fast efficient manner.