earticle

영어

Cell glycome is defined by the glyco synthesis machinery regulated by harmonized expression of more than 100 glycogenes. The machinery-dependent glycome drastically shifts during cell progression and differentiation in association with tumorigenesis and malformation, and thus it motivates us to discover the disease-related alteration in glycosylation. Glycan-targeted histochemical approaches using lectin and anti-glycogene antibodies have provided some key information to characterize specific histological types of cells in pathology. However, this approach is not suitable for the comprehensive analysis targeting the cell glycome, and thus may fail to provide insight into glycome shift during the disease progression. Several years ago, we developed the methodology for rapid and systematic glycome shift analysis targeting formalin-fixed tissue specimens by means of lectin microarray. The resultant method enabled simultaneous observation of over 40 lectins interacted with glycoproteins in 1 mm2 of the tissue specimens. Recently, we sophisticated this methodology to be suitable for comparative analysis of a series of cells in specific groups isolated from a single tissue specimen by laser microdissection, and now our research has gained interest in the variability and distribution of cell glycome in the tissue, i.e., “tissue glycome mapping”. In this meeting, we will summarize the advantage of this new methodology and its application for glyco-biomarker discovery, as well as the construction of “tissue glycome atlas”.