Silva Maria Luísa S
Unidade de Aprendizagem ao Longo da Vida, Universidade Aberta, 1269-001 Lisboa, Portugal.
Explor Target Antitumor Ther. 2023;4(3):366-395. doi: 10.37349/etat.2023.00140. Epub 2023 Jun 28.
Cancer serum biomarkers are valuable or even indispensable for cancer diagnostics and/or monitoring and, currently, many cancer serum markers are routinely used in the clinic. Most of those markers are glycoproteins, carrying cancer-specific glycan structures that can provide extra-information for cancer monitoring. Nonetheless, in the majority of cases, this differential feature is not exploited and the corresponding analytical assays detect only the protein amount, disregarding the analysis of the aberrant glycoform. Two exceptions to this trend are the biomarkers α-fetoprotein (AFP) and cancer antigen 19-9 (CA19-9), which are clinically monitored for their cancer-related glycan changes, and only the AFP assay includes quantification of both the protein amount and the altered glycoform. This narrative review demonstrates, through several examples, the advantages of the combined quantification of protein cancer biomarkers and the respective glycoform analysis, which enable to yield the maximum information and overcome the weaknesses of each individual analysis. This strategy allows to achieve higher sensitivity and specificity in the detection of cancer, enhancing the diagnostic power of biomarker-based cancer detection tests.
癌症血清生物标志物对于癌症诊断和/或监测非常有价值甚至不可或缺，目前，许多癌症血清标志物已在临床中常规使用。这些标志物大多是糖蛋白，携带癌症特异性聚糖结构，可为癌症监测提供额外信息。然而，在大多数情况下，这种差异特征未被利用，相应的分析测定仅检测蛋白质含量，而忽略了对异常糖型的分析。这一趋势的两个例外是生物标志物甲胎蛋白（AFP）和癌抗原19-9（CA19-9），它们因与癌症相关的聚糖变化而受到临床监测，并且只有AFP检测包括蛋白质含量和改变的糖型的定量。这篇叙述性综述通过几个例子展示了蛋白质癌症生物标志物联合定量以及各自糖型分析的优势，这能够产生最大信息并克服每种单独分析的弱点。这种策略可以在癌症检测中实现更高的灵敏度和特异性，增强基于生物标志物的癌症检测测试的诊断能力。
