Inagaki Yoshinori, Song Peipei, Tang Wei, Kokudo Norihiro
Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery Division, Department of Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo.
Drug Discov Ther. 2015 Apr;9(2):129-32. doi: 10.5582/ddt.2015.01031.
Cancer cells express various aberrant glycoconjugates. Several kinds of carbohydrate antigens have been used for the serological tumor markers. In particular, the serological level of sialylated carbohydrate antigens, which contain the sialic acid residue in their structure, showed effectiveness in diagnosing cancer behavior. Although large number of carbohydrate antigens in serum of cancer patients was elevated broadly in various cancers, each tumor marker has different sensitivity and specificity for each cancer. Therefore, the combined use of several tumor markers which have different characteristics is effective for better sensitivity in diagnosing cancer behavior. The mechanism of synthesizing cancer-associated carbohydrate antigens is not fully understood because it is very complex. In addition, new cancer-associated carbohydrate antigens are also identified by molecular oncological studies. Those investigations are considered to develop more effective tumor markers to diagnose cancer behavior.
癌细胞表达各种异常糖缀合物。几种碳水化合物抗原已被用作血清学肿瘤标志物。特别是，结构中含有唾液酸残基的唾液酸化碳水化合物抗原的血清学水平在诊断癌症行为方面显示出有效性。尽管癌症患者血清中的大量碳水化合物抗原在各种癌症中普遍升高，但每种肿瘤标志物对每种癌症具有不同的敏感性和特异性。因此，联合使用几种具有不同特征的肿瘤标志物对于提高诊断癌症行为的敏感性是有效的。合成癌症相关碳水化合物抗原的机制尚未完全了解，因为它非常复杂。此外，分子肿瘤学研究也鉴定出了新的癌症相关碳水化合物抗原。这些研究被认为有助于开发更有效的肿瘤标志物来诊断癌症行为。
