Chemical structure of the carbohydrate moiety of fucose-rich glycopeptides from human pancreatic juice.

Human pancreatic juice, obtained from nine patients after partial excision of the pancreas for bile duct cancer, was fractionated in order to isolate its glycopeptides. Three glycopeptides were purified employing ion-exchange chromatography and gel filtration. All the glycopeptides were found to be free of sialic acid and galactosamine but to have an unusually high content of L-fucose. The chemical structures of the three glycopeptides were determined using 500-MHz [1H]-NMR spectroscopy. One of them, glycopeptide, GP-4, possessed a biantennary structure with three L-fucose residues. The second glycopeptide, GP-3, had a triantennary structure with four L-fucose residues, and the third one, G-2, had a tetra-antennary structure with five L-fucose residues. The chemical compositions of these glycopeptides, including the absence of sialic acid and the high L-fucose content, indicate that they represent a new class of glycopeptide present in the normal human pancreas.