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Heparan Sulfate Glycosaminoglycans: (Un)Expected Allies in Cancer Clinical Management

In an era when cancer glycobiology research is exponentially growing, we are witnessing a progressive translation of the major scientific findings to the clinical practice with the overarching aim of improving cancer patients’ management. Many mechanistic cell biology studies have demonstrated that...

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Autores principales: Faria-Ramos, Isabel, Poças, Juliana, Marques, Catarina, Santos-Antunes, João, Macedo, Guilherme, Reis, Celso A., Magalhães, Ana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7911160/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33494442
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biom11020136
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author Faria-Ramos, Isabel
Poças, Juliana
Marques, Catarina
Santos-Antunes, João
Macedo, Guilherme
Reis, Celso A.
Magalhães, Ana
author_facet Faria-Ramos, Isabel
Poças, Juliana
Marques, Catarina
Santos-Antunes, João
Macedo, Guilherme
Reis, Celso A.
Magalhães, Ana
author_sort Faria-Ramos, Isabel
collection PubMed
description In an era when cancer glycobiology research is exponentially growing, we are witnessing a progressive translation of the major scientific findings to the clinical practice with the overarching aim of improving cancer patients’ management. Many mechanistic cell biology studies have demonstrated that heparan sulfate (HS) glycosaminoglycans are key molecules responsible for several molecular and biochemical processes, impacting extracellular matrix properties and cellular functions. HS can interact with a myriad of different ligands, and therefore, hold a pleiotropic role in regulating the activity of important cellular receptors and downstream signalling pathways. The aberrant expression of HS glycan chains in tumours determines main malignant features, such as cancer cell proliferation, angiogenesis, invasion and metastasis. In this review, we devote particular attention to HS biological activities, its expression profile and modulation in cancer. Moreover, we highlight HS clinical potential to improve both diagnosis and prognosis of cancer, either as HS-based biomarkers or as therapeutic targets.
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spelling pubmed-79111602021-02-28 Heparan Sulfate Glycosaminoglycans: (Un)Expected Allies in Cancer Clinical Management Faria-Ramos, Isabel Poças, Juliana Marques, Catarina Santos-Antunes, João Macedo, Guilherme Reis, Celso A. Magalhães, Ana Biomolecules Review In an era when cancer glycobiology research is exponentially growing, we are witnessing a progressive translation of the major scientific findings to the clinical practice with the overarching aim of improving cancer patients’ management. Many mechanistic cell biology studies have demonstrated that heparan sulfate (HS) glycosaminoglycans are key molecules responsible for several molecular and biochemical processes, impacting extracellular matrix properties and cellular functions. HS can interact with a myriad of different ligands, and therefore, hold a pleiotropic role in regulating the activity of important cellular receptors and downstream signalling pathways. The aberrant expression of HS glycan chains in tumours determines main malignant features, such as cancer cell proliferation, angiogenesis, invasion and metastasis. In this review, we devote particular attention to HS biological activities, its expression profile and modulation in cancer. Moreover, we highlight HS clinical potential to improve both diagnosis and prognosis of cancer, either as HS-based biomarkers or as therapeutic targets. MDPI 2021-01-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7911160/ /pubmed/33494442 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biom11020136 Text en © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Faria-Ramos, Isabel
Poças, Juliana
Marques, Catarina
Santos-Antunes, João
Macedo, Guilherme
Reis, Celso A.
Magalhães, Ana
Heparan Sulfate Glycosaminoglycans: (Un)Expected Allies in Cancer Clinical Management
title Heparan Sulfate Glycosaminoglycans: (Un)Expected Allies in Cancer Clinical Management
title_full Heparan Sulfate Glycosaminoglycans: (Un)Expected Allies in Cancer Clinical Management
title_fullStr Heparan Sulfate Glycosaminoglycans: (Un)Expected Allies in Cancer Clinical Management
title_full_unstemmed Heparan Sulfate Glycosaminoglycans: (Un)Expected Allies in Cancer Clinical Management
title_short Heparan Sulfate Glycosaminoglycans: (Un)Expected Allies in Cancer Clinical Management
title_sort heparan sulfate glycosaminoglycans: (un)expected allies in cancer clinical management
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7911160/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33494442
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biom11020136
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