DATE:

Friday, March 10, 2006

TITLE:

GLYCAN MICROARRAY EXPRESSIONS AND THEIR POTENTIAL USAGE IN PROGNOSIS AND DIAGNOSIS OF CANCER (No. 96)

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS-214

SPEAKER:

Marko Vuskovic, Department of Computer Science, SDSU
Hongyu Xu, GlycoMedical Research Institute
Margaret Huflejt, GlycoMedical Research Institute

ABSTRACT:

Glycans are complex sugar chains that decorate the surface of human cells. Abnormal glycans can alter cell-cell recognition and signaling, and can deregulate the immune response�and if persisting may result in malignant transformation. The technology known as functional glycan microarray, is a glass slide onto which are printed hundreds of different glycan chains. The array offers scientists a cutting edge research tool for analyzing the specificities of glycan binding proteins. The printed glycan array slides can be used to simultaneously detect multiple anti-glycan autoantibodies present in sera of healthy individuals and cancer patients. Recent research by Glycomedical Research Institute (GMRI) has suggested that this technique can identify specific clusters of anti-glycan autoantibodies in sera of patients with breast cancer, and therefore can be used as a diagnostic tool for detection of malignancy, and for monitoring a patient�s immune response to cancer and to anti-cancer treatments. This talk covers the recent results obtained by GMRI and affiliated researchers that include methodologies for clustering, classification and visualization of glycan microarray expressions, and their application on sera from 40 cancer patients and healthy controls.

HOST:

Jose E. Castillo