Abstract
Fucosylation is an oligosaccharide modification that plays an important role in immune response and malignancy, and specific fucosyltransferases (FUTs) catalyze the three types of fucosylations: core-type, Lewis type, and H type. FUTs regulate cancer proliferation, invasiveness, and resistance to chemotherapy by modifying the glycosylation of signaling receptors. Oligosaccharides on PD-1/PD-L1 proteins are specifically fucosylated, leading to functional modifications. Expression of FUTs is upregulated in renal cell carcinoma, bladder cancer, and prostate cancer. Aberrant fucosylation in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) could be used as a novel biomarker for prostate cancer. Furthermore, elucidation of the biological function of fucosylation could result in the development of novel therapeutic targets. Further studies are needed in the field of fucosylation glycobiology in urological malignancies.
Highlights
Fucosylation is an oligosaccharide modification that plays an important role in immune response and malignancies
Drake et al assessed the N-glycosylation patterns and compositional differences between tumor and non-tumor regions of ccRCC specimens using an imaging mass spectrometry approach and transcriptomic gene array data. Their results showed that multiantennary N-glycans with bisecting N-acetylglucosamine and multiple fucose residues, which are abundant in the proximal tubule, are not detected in ccRCC tissues, whereas multiple tumor-specific N-glycans with tri- and tetra-antennary structures and various levels of fucosylation and sialylation were present in ccRCC tissues
This finding was consistent with the results of lectin microarray analysis, which showed that the Fucα1-2Galβ1-4GlcNAc structure recognized by Lectin ulex europaeus agglutininI (UEA-I) was approximately two-fold higher in TGFβ-treated cells than in control cells
Summary
Fucosylation is an oligosaccharide modification that plays an important role in immune response and malignancies. One of the representative fucosylation-related cancer biomarkers is fucosylated alphafetoprotein (AFP), which is named the AFP-L3 fraction It has been widely used as a specific cancer biomarker for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) since 1996 in Japan and 2005 in the United States [1,2] because it is more specific than alpha-fetoprotein. Fucosylation is dependent on fucosyltransferase (FUT) activity and the level of its donor substrate, guanosine diphosphate (GDP)-fucose synthetic enzyme. Each type of fucosylation is catalyzed by specific FUTs [5,6,7,8]. Each fucosylation are catalyzed by specific fucosyltransferases. Cies, urological cancers, and the possible biological and clinical role of fucosylation based on recent findings
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