Lectins: an effective tool for screening of potential cancer biomarkers
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biochemistry, Biotechnology, Oncology
- Keywords
- Cancer, Lectin, Biomarker, Glycan, Proteomics, Glycosylation
- Copyright
- © 2017 Hashim et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Lectins: an effective tool for screening of potential cancer biomarkers. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3035v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3035v1
Abstract
In recent years, the use of lectins for screening of potential biomarkers has gained increased importance in cancer research, given the development in glycobiology that highlights altered structural changes of glycans in cancer associated processes. Lectins, having the properties of recognizing specific carbohydrate moieties of glycoconjugates, have become an effective tool for detection of new cancer biomarkers in complex bodily fluids and tissues. The specificity of lectins provides an added advantage of selecting peptides that are differently glycosylated and aberrantly expressed in cancer patients, many of which are not possibly detected using conventional methods because of their low abundance in bodily fluids. When coupled with mass spectrometry, research utilizing lectins, which are mainly from plants and fungi, has led to identification of numerous potential cancer biomarkers that may be used in the future. This article reviews lectin-based methods that are commonly adopted in cancer biomarker discovery research.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.