News Releases & Research Results Cancer detection by orderly synthesizing heterogeneous glycan clusters - A new synthetic strategy for cell recognition by mimicking living organisms -

The results of the international collaborative research project conducted by Chief Scientist Katsunori Tanaka and International Program Associate (at the time of the research) Ivan Smirnov of the Biofunctional Synthetic Chemistry Laboratory, RIKEN.

• Cancer was selectively detected by rapidly and orderly synthesizing heterogeneous glycan clusters composed of four different types of glycans.
• Specifically, a method for rapidly optimizing the combination of four types of glycans that interact with specific cancer cells was developed. By orderly synthesizing “heterogeneous glycan clusters” on protein surfaces, live cancer tissues removed from mice were selectively detected through pattern recognition.
• The results of this research project should be applied to revolutionary diagnosis and drug delivery systems for selective cancer detection through the "pattern recognition" mechanisms of glycans.

This program was conducted with the support of the Science and Technology Platform Program for Advanced Biological Medicine by AMED.

The results were published online in the scientific journal Small on October 20.

Ivan Smirnov, et al. A strategy for tumor targeting by higher-order glycan pattern recognition: synthesis and in vitro and in vivo properties of glycoalbumins conjugated with four different N-glycan molecules Small
DOI: 10.1002/smll.202004831