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Glycosylation in Cancer: Enzymatic Basis for Alterations in N-Glycan Branching

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Glycoscience: Biology and Medicine

Abstract

Aberrant glycosylation is the basic phenomenon found in almost all types of experimental and clinical cancer tissues and/or cell lines, and many glycosyl epitopes are known to constitute so-called tumor-associated carbohydrate antigens (TACAs). Many lines of evidence suggest that these cancer-related glycosyl epitopes play functional roles in a variety of pathophysiologic events in cancer, such as cell metastasis and invasion, apart from their potential values as diagnostic and/or prognostic glyco-biomarkers. This chapter describes a brief summary on the aberrant glycosylation in cancer, the related glycosyltransferases, and their roles in cancer development and progression. The chapter focuses on the glycosyltransferases responsible for N-glycan branching; those include N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase (GnT)-III, GnT-IV, and GnT-V and fucosyltransferase (FUT) 8.

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Acknowledgment

The authors acknowledge many colleagues who shared the work with us for a longer period. We also apologize not to have cited relevant papers published by many excellent scientists.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Systems Glycobiology Research Group, RIKEN-MAX Planck Joint Research Center, RIKEN Global Research Cluster, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama, 351-0198, Japan

    Hiroaki Korekane & Naoyuki Taniguchi

Authors
  1. Hiroaki Korekane
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  2. Naoyuki Taniguchi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hiroaki Korekane .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Tokyo Metropolitan Geriatric Hospital, Tokyo, Japan

    Tamao Endo

  2. Department of Biomolecular Systems, Max-Planck-Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany

    Peter H. Seeberger

  3. Dept. Biological Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

    Gerald W. Hart

  4. Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taipei, Taiwan

    Chi-Huey Wong

  5. Systems Glycobiology Group, RIKEN-Max Planck Joint Research Center for Systems Chemical Biology, Wako, Saitama, Japan

    Naoyuki Taniguchi

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© 2014 Springer Japan

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Korekane, H., Taniguchi, N. (2014). Glycosylation in Cancer: Enzymatic Basis for Alterations in N-Glycan Branching. In: Endo, T., Seeberger, P., Hart, G., Wong, CH., Taniguchi, N. (eds) Glycoscience: Biology and Medicine. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54836-2_183-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54836-2_183-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Tokyo

  • Online ISBN: 978-4-431-54836-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences

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