Serum tri- and tetra-antennary N-glycan is a potential predictive biomarker for castration-resistant prostate cancer.

BACKGROUND

The U.S. FDA has approved several novel systemic agents including abiraterone acetate and taxoid cabazitaxel for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) result in a complicated decision-making while selecting an appropriate treatment. Therefore, a predictive biomarker for CRPC would provide useful information to physicians. The aim of this study is to evaluate the diagnostic potential of serum N-glycan profiling in CRPC.

METHODS

Serum N-glycomics was performed in 80 healthy volunteers and 286 benign prostatic hyperplasia, 258 early-stage PC, 46 PC with androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), and 68 CRPC patients using the glycoblotting method. A total of 36 types of N-glycan levels in each patient were analyzed using logistic regression analysis and receiver operating characteristic curves. We also examined the expression of N-glycan branching enzyme genes in PC cell lines using quantitative RT-PCR.

RESULTS

We observed that tri- and tetra-antennary N-glycans were significantly higher in CRPC patients than in any other groups. The longitudinal follow-up of tri- and tetra- antennary N-glycan levels revealed that one PC with ADT patient showed an increase that was more than the cut-off level and two consecutive increases in tri- and tetra-antennary N-glycan levels 3 months apart; resulted in biochemical recurrence despite the castrate level of testosterone, and the patient was defined as CRPC. Expression of N-glycan branching enzyme genes were significantly upregulated in CRPC cell lines.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest that the overexpression of tri- and tetra-antennary N-glycan may be associated with the castration-resistant status in PC and may be a potential predictive biomarker for CRPC.