6th ESACP Congress, Heidelberg, April 7-11, 1999

A010
THE SUGAR CODE IN PATHOLOGY: NEW APPROACHES, NEW TOOLS
Gabius HJ

Institut für Physiologische Chemie, Tierärztliche Fakultät Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München, München, Germany

Mapping of carbohydrate epitopes by plant lectins and monoclonal antibodies is an established descriptive approach in histochemistry. In recent years, there is a growing appreciation that glycan chains of cellular glycoconjugates excel as information-bearing molecules employing the sugar code system (1). Since protein (lectin)-carbohydrate recognition in situ will mediate diverse inter- and intracellular processes extending to host defense, growth regulation, and cell adhesion and routing (2), it is tempting to devise and exploit new tools histochemically. Custom-made neoglycoconjugates with the synthetically versatile sugar part as homing device, antibodies against endogenous lectins such as galectins and labeled tissue lectins which harbor distinct fine-specificities relative to plant lectins are the keys to innovative strategies in the search for molecules with impact on the course of the malignant disease (3,4). Initial results with these probes attest their value in diagnostic problems and unveil correlations with prognosis (e.g. in the case of binding sites of histoblood group-A/H trisaccharides in lung cancer) and parameters derived from syntactic structure analysis (5,6). The presented results encourage to pursue and extend the outlined experimental route of this emerging concept.
1. Gabius, H.-J., Gabius, S. (Eds) Glycosciences: Status and Perspectives. Chapman & Hall, London, 1997
2. Gabius, H.-J. Eur. J. Biochem. 243, 543-576, 1997
3. Danguy, A. et al. Acta Anat. 161, 206-218, 1998
4. Gabius, H.-J. et al. Biotech. & Histochem. 73, 263-277, 1998
5. Kayser, K., Gabius, H.-J. Progr. Histochem. Cytochem. 32(2), 1-106, 1997
6. Kayser, K., Gabius, H.-J. Cell Tissue Res. 1999, in press.