Researchers have identified an enzyme that appears to drive the conversion of normal colon tissue into cancer by attaching sugar molecules to certain proteins.

‘Sugar-modified proteins play an important role in turning healthy cells into cancerous cells. It is an emerging area of cancer biology that may lead to new therapies.’

"Our data suggest that this specific enzyme seems to affect a subset of proteins that could be involved in cell-cell adhesion," said Hans Wandall from University of Copenhagen in Denmark. 




In other words, the glycan modifications changed the patterns in which cells stuck together, leading the cells to develop as something that looked more like a tumour than a healthy tissue.
Understanding the role that sugar-modified (glycosylated) proteins play in healthy and cancerous cells is an emerging area of cancer biology that may lead to new therapies.
Wandall's team studied a group of 20 enzymes that initiate the first step in a particular kind of glycan modification, called GalNAc-type O-glycosylation, found on diverse proteins.
These enzymes, called GalNAc transferases (GalNAc-Ts) are variously found in different amounts in different tissues, but their functions are poorly understood.
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Source-IANS