Direct analysis of aberrant glycosylation on haptoglobin in patients with gastric cancer

// Jae-Han Kim 1 , Sung Hyeon Lee 2 , Sookyung Choi 2 , Unyong Kim 3 , In Seok Yeo 4 , Su Hee Kim 2 , Myung Jin Oh 3 , Hantae Moon 3 , Jua Lee 3 , Seunghyup Jeong 3 , Min Gew Choi 5 , Jun Ho Lee 5 , Tae Sung Sohn 5 , Jae Moon Bae 5 , Sung Kim 5 , Yang Won Min 5 , Hyuk Lee 5 , Jun Haeng Lee 5 , Poong-Lyul Rhee 5 , Jae J. Kim 5 , Su Jin Lee 5 , Seung Tae Kim 5 , Jeeyun Lee 5 , Se Hoon Park 5 , Joon Oh Park 5 , Young Suk Park 5 , Ho Yeong Lim 5 , Won Ki Kang 5 , Hyun Joo An 3 , Jung Hoe Kim 4 1 Department of Food and Nutrition, Chungnam National University, Yuseong-Gu, Deajeon, Korea 2 GLYCAN Co., Ltd., Healthcare Innovation Park, Bundang-Gu, Seongnam, Korea 3 Graduate School of Analytical Science and Technology, Chungnam National University, Yuseong-Gu, Deajeon, Korea 4 Department of Biological Sciences, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Yuseong-Gu, Daejeon, Korea 5 Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea Correspondence to: Se Hoon Park, email: hematoma@skku.edu Keywords: stomach neoplasm, haptoglobin, N-glycan, glycoprotein, biomarker Received: October 05, 2016      Accepted: December 21, 2016      Published: December 29, 2016 ABSTRACT Based on our previous studies, differential analysis of N-glycan expression bound on serum haptoglobin reveals the quantitative variation on gastric cancer patients. In this prospective case-control study, we explore the clinically relevant glycan markers for gastric cancer diagnosis. Serum samples were collected from patients with gastric cancer ( n = 44) and healthy control ( n = 44). N-glycans alteration was monitored by intact analysis of Hp using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry followed by immunoaffinity purification with the serum samples. Intensity and frequency markers were defined depending on the mass spectrometry data analysis. Multiple markers were found with high diagnostic efficacy. As intensity markers ( I -marker), six markers were discovered with the AUC > 0.8. The high efficiency markers exhibited AUC of 0.93 with a specificity of 86% when the sensitivity was set to 95%. We additionally established frequency marker ( f -marker) panels based on the tendency of high N-glycan expression. The AUC to conclude patients and control group were 0.82 and 0.79, respectively. This study suggested that N-glycan variation of serum haptoglobin were associated with patients with gastric cancer and might be a promising marker for the cancer screening.