Glycan signatures for the identification of cisplatin‐resistant testicular cancer cell lines: Specific glycoprofiling of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG)

Medical Relevance, State-of-the-Art and Perspectives of "Sweet Metacode" in Liquid Biopsy Approaches

This review briefly introduces readers to an area where glycomics meets modern oncodiagnostics with a focus on the analysis of sialic acid (Neu5Ac)-terminated structures. We present the biochemical perspective of aberrant sialylation during tumourigenesis and its significance, as well as an analytical perspective on the detection of these structures using different approaches for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. We also provide a comparison to other established liquid biopsy approaches, and we mathematically define an early-stage cancer based on the overall prognosis and effect of these approaches on the patient's quality of life. Finally, some barriers including regulations and quality of clinical validations data are discussed, and a perspective and major challenges in this area are summarised.

Glycosylation in extracellular vesicles: Isolation, characterization, composition, analysis and clinical applications

This review provides a comprehensive overview of our understanding of the role that glycans play in the formation, loading and release of extracellular vesicles (EVs). The capture of EVs (typically with a size of 100-200 nm) is described, including approaches based on glycan recognition with glycan-based analysis offering highly sensitive detection of EVs. Furthermore, detailed information is provided about the use of EV glycans and glycan processing enzymes as potential biomarkers, therapeutic targets or tools applied for regenerative medicine. The review also provides a short introduction into advanced methods for the characterization of EVs, new insights into the biomolecular corona covering EVs and bioanalytical tools available for glycan analysis.

Exosomes from prostate cancer cell lines: Isolation optimisation and characterisation

Exosomes are considered to be a rich source of biomarkers, hence in this article we examine the best procedure for their isolation. We examine several isolation procedures, exosome storage conditions and other conditions affecting exosome production by prostate cell lines. We selected four different commercially available kits based on different principles to achieve exosome isolation, the best being magnetic-based. In addition, we found storage at - 20 °C to be good for storing isolated exosomes and that exosomes were produced from the cancerous prostate cell line 22Rv1 in much greater amounts than the non-cancerous prostate cell line RWPE1. We also found differences in the response of both cell lines in the production of exosomes as a result of stress, i.e. exposure to hydrogen peroxide and starvation. The effect of Triton X-100 on exosome lysis was examined using two different surfactant concentrations by analysis of the exosome count and change in the exosome size. The final part of the article details the advantages of the use of a 2D biochip prepared in-house over a commercially available 3D biochip for monitoring the interaction of exosomes via its surface receptors (CD63) with an immobilised ligand (anti-CD63 antibodies) using surface plasmon resonance. The final experiment shows the potential of lectin fluorescent microarrays for the analysis of glycans present in lysed exosomes.