Page 786 - Read Online

Zhang et al. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2019;5:56 Journal of Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/2394-4722.2018.112 Metastasis and Treatment

Original article Open Access

Determination of cytokine regulated glycan
expression by using molecularly imprinted polymers

targeting sialic acid

Yuecheng Zhang, Kushtrim Llapashtica, Sudhirkumar Shinde, Börje Sellergren, Zahra El-Schich, Anette
Gjörloff Wingren

Department of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Health and Society, Malmö University, Malmö 20506, Sweden.

Correspondence to: Dr. Anette Gjörloff Wingren, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Health and Society, Malmö
University, Malmö 20506, Sweden. E-mail: Anette.gjorloff-wingren@mau.se
How to cite this article: Zhang Y, Llapashtica K, Shinde S, Sellergren B, El-Schich Z, Wingren AG. Determination of cytokine
regulated glycan expression by using molecularly imprinted polymers targeting sialic acid. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2019;5:56.
http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-4722.2018.112
Received: 31 Dec 2018 First Decision: 18 Mar 2019 Revised: 16 Apr 2019 Accepted: 28 May 2019 Published: 11 Jul 2019

Science Editor: Rafat Siddiqui Copy Editor: Cai-Hong Wang Production Editor: Jing Yu

Abstract

Cancer cells often have an increased amount of glycans, such as sialic acid (SA), on the cell surface, which normally
play an important role in cell growth, proliferation and differentiation. In this study, SA expression is determined
by fluorescent nanoprobes, molecularly imprinted polymers, SA-MIPs. The nanoprobes are synthesized with an
imprinting approach to produce tailor-made fluorescent core-shell particles with high affinity for cell surface SA.
Inflammation and cytokine production are well known tumor promoters, modulating the cellular microenvironment,
including an aberrant cell surface glycan pattern. The recombinant cytokines IL-4, IL-6, IL-8 and a cocktail of
cytokines collected from stimulated T leukemia Jurkat cells were used to induce in vitro inflammation in two cell
lines, and thereafter analyzed with the use of SA-MIPs and flow cytometry. One of the cell lines showed a different
binding pattern of SA-MIPs after treatment with recombinant cytokines and the cytokine cocktail. This study shows
that SA-MIPs can be an important tool in the investigation of overexpressed glycans in the tumor microenvironment.

Keywords: Cancer, cytokine, glycans, molecularly imprinted polymers, sialic acid

INTRODUCTION
[1]
Abnormal cell growth can be initiated through inflammation . Cancer cells are able to reshape the
microenvironment by expression of tumor-promoting chemokines and cytokines . Fast growing cancer
[2,3]
© The Author(s) 2019. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,
and indicate if changes were made.

www.jcmtjournal.com