Abstract
Ovarian cancer remains one of the most common causes of death among gynecological malignancies afflicting women worldwide. Among the gynecological cancers, cervical and endometrial cancers confer the greatest burden to the developing and the developed world, respectively; however, the overall survival rates for patients with ovarian cancer are worse than the two aforementioned. The majority of patients with ovarian cancer are diagnosed at an advanced stage when cancer has metastasized to different body sites and the cure rates, including the five-year survival, are significantly diminished. The delay in diagnosis is due to the absence of or unspecific symptoms at the initial stages of cancer as well as a lack of effective screening and diagnostic biomarkers that can detect cancer at the early stages. This, therefore, provides an imperative to prospect for new biomarkers that will provide early diagnostic strategies allowing timely mitigative interventions. Glycosylation is a protein post-translational modification that is modified in cancer patients. In the current review, we document the state-of-the-art of blood-based glycomic biomarkers for early diagnosis of ovarian cancer and the technologies currently used in this endeavor.
Highlights
In 2018, the Global Cancer Observatory GLOBOCAN reported an estimate of 295,414 ovarian cancer (OvCa) cases out of the total incidences of female cancers of about 8.8 million globally
We review the clinically approved glycan-based biomarkers for OvCa, the milestones achieved in the ongoing glycomics research, as well as the state of technology used in the field and the challenges encountered
To affirm the place of glycan alterations in the possible staging of OvCa, a study of an OvCa mouse model reported an increase in sialylation with increasing tumor size, implying that sialylation is associated with OvCa progression and, likely to be useful in staging [86]
Summary
In 2018, the Global Cancer Observatory GLOBOCAN reported an estimate of 295,414 ovarian cancer (OvCa) cases out of the total incidences of female cancers of about 8.8 million globally. OvCas are classified into five major types based on their histological and molecular genetics They are high-grade serous type, which is the most abundant, followed by endometrioid, clear cell, mucinous and the least abundant, the low-grade serous ovarian carcinoma [2,3]. Glycans are made up of monosaccharides that are linked by glycosidic bonds in many different ways to form highly branched structures, they exhibit enormous heterogeneity This is in contrast to the highly conserved template-driven DNA and proteins [8]. Aberrant modifications of glycans have been reported for many forms of cancer and they correlate with the overexpression of enzymes that are responsible for the biological processing of glycans, namely glycosidases and glycosyltransferases [9] They are usually protein-specific, cell-specific, site-specific and their mechanisms have been studied in detail; for a review, see [10]. We review the clinically approved glycan-based biomarkers for OvCa, the milestones achieved in the ongoing glycomics research, as well as the state of technology used in the field and the challenges encountered
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