Isolation and Characterization of an N-Linked Oligosaccharide That Is Significantly Increased in Sera from Patients with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Abstract

The structures of N-linked oligosaccharides present in human sera from 12 healthy volunteers and from 14 patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were analyzed by our recently developed partially automated systematic method. Thirty different structures of oligosaccharides were deduced, and these accounted for 84.1% of the total N-linked oligosaccharides present in human sera. All of the quantified oligosaccharide levels in healthy human sera were within twice the standard deviation. The amount of a triantennary trigalactosylated structure with one outer arm fucosylation (A3G3Fo) was found to be markedly increased in NSCLC patients in comparison to that in healthy volunteers (p<0.01). No significant positive correlation with other clinical data was found. Serum A3G3Fo levels can thus be a novel marker for the diagnosis of NSCLC.