J.Jpn. Surg. Soc.. 97(2): 145-151, 1996

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Feature topic

CARBOHYDRATE ANTIGENS AS TUMOR MARKER

Since S. Hakomori’s pioneer work, many has studied on carbohydrate chains on cancer. Many monoclonal antibldies are developed and some of them are already evaluated as tumor markers. They are used routinely in daily clinical practice for immunohistochemistry and immunodetection of circulating antigens in patients’s era. However, most of them are not specific to cancers, are negative in early cancers, they are usually elevated in sera of patients with advanced or recurrent cancers and used in monitoring patinets. In the major organic sites, positive rates of some serum markers are shown in a table and discussed their usefulnesses and limitations. Problems of similarities and discrepancies in rnany commercial systems of sugar chain tumor markers are discussed. Recent topic in the function of sialylated carbohydrate antigens is their strong affinities with cell-adhesion molecules, for that reason, sialyl Lweis Aand sialyl Lewis X are thought to be responsible for the distant metastasis of those cancers that produce them.

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