title: Glycopeptide microarray for autoantibody detection in cancer.
abstract: Evaluation of: Pedersen JW, Blixt O, Bennett EP et al. Seromic profiling of colorectal cancer patients with novel glycopeptide microarray. Int. J. Cancer 128(8), 1860-1871 (2011). Autoantibodies to cancer-associated antigens hold promise as sensitive biomarkers for cancer detection. Based on this hypothesis, and knowing that O-glycans on proteins constitute a source of possible epitopes recognized by autoantibodies, Pedersen and colleagues have generated a glycopeptide array displaying a comprehensive library of glycopeptides and glycoproteins derived from human mucins. The profiling of sera immunoreactivity of colon cancer patients allowed the identification of cancer-associated autoantibodies to various mucin (MUC)1 and MUC4 glycopeptides carrying aberrant glycosylation. This article provides evidence for the value of glycopeptides displaying cancer-associated glycans in diagnostic applications, and opens new avenues for the expansion to other protein glycoforms, as well as to further applications of such a microarray strategy for other post-translational modifications of proteins in the search for cancer biomarker.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology of the University of Porto (IPATIMUP), Rua Dr Roberto Frias, Portugal. celsor@ipatimup.pt
authors.forename: Celso A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Reis
authors.forename: Diana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Campos
authors.forename: Hugo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Osório
authors.forename: Lúcio Lara
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Santos