Investigation of ovarian cancer associated sialylation changes in N-linked glycopeptides by quantitative proteomics

摘要

Background: In approximately 80% of patients, ovarian cancer is diagnosed when the patient is already in the advanced stages of the disease. CA125 is currently used as the marker for ovarian cancer; however, it lacks specificity and sensitivity for detecting early stage disease. There is a critical unmet need for sensitive and specific routine screening tests for early diagnosis that can reduce ovarian cancer lethality by reliably detecting the disease at its earliest and treatable stages.Results: In this study, we investigated the N-linked sialylated glycopeptides in serum samples from healthy and ovarian cancer patients using Lectin-directed Tandem Labeling (LTL) and iTRAQ quantitative proteomics methods. We identified 45 N-linked sialylated glycopeptides containing 46 glycosylation sites. Among those, ten sialylated glycopeptides were significantly up-regulated in ovarian cancer patients' serum samples. LC-MS/MS analysis of the non-glycosylated peptides from the same samples, western blot data using lectin enriched glycoproteins of various ovarian cancer type samples, and PNGase F (+/-) treatment confirmed the sialylation changes in the ovarian cancer samples.Conclusion: Herein, we demonstrated that several proteins are aberrantly sialylated in N-linked glycopeptides in ovarian cancer and detection of glycopeptides with abnormal sialylation changes may have the potential to serve as biomarkers for ovarian cancer.