Circulating glycosylation-based novel biomarkers for lung cancer diagnosis

Abstract

Lung cancer is globally the 2nd most common cancer in both men and women. Due to its lack of symptoms during early stages, lung cancer is often diagnosed at a more advanced stage and thus, has a very poor 5-year survival rate. The current diagnostic method is the detection of the neoplasm masses through a CT scan while specific biomarkers are yet to be discovered. Aim of this project is to develop a circulating novel biomarker candidate for early detection of lung cancer. A fluorescently detectable lectin-coated europium(III)-nanoparticles were used as a selective carbohydrate-recognizing tracer to identify potential lung cancer specific glycovariants on different glycoprotein. Initial glycoprofiling experiments with cell culture spent medium and clinical plasma samples provided information on protein-glycovariant combinations that discriminated cancerous samples from the control samples. The three best combinations were optimized and a cohort study of 97 samples was performed with each optimized novel immunoassay. The results obtained from the initial glycoprofiling experiments performed with 32 clinical serum samples showed a significant difference between cancer and control groups. The optimizations done on each combination improved assay performance but the cohort study of 97 samples had no significance between the two groups.