MOLECULARLY IMPRINTED MICRO- AND NANOPARTICLES FOR GLYCOPROTEIN ENRICHMENT IN THE EARLY DETECTION OF CANCER ASSOCIATED GLYCAN BIOMARKERS

Aberrant glycosylation has proven to correlate with various diseases including cancer. One of the key constituents in the tumor specific glycans is sialic acid (Neu5Ac). An important alteration in cancer progression is an increased level of α2,6-sialylation.¹ Developing molecularly-imprinted polymers (MIPs) with high affinity binding for Neu5Ac distinguishing different linkages of Neu5Ac (α2,3/α2,6) is an important task which can help in early cancer diagnosis. The glycospecific MIPs are produced using combined boronate, amine, urea-based cooperative imprinting.² Sialic acid with different mode of linkage (α2-6 linkage versus α2-3) serves as a model saccharide template. We report here on fundamental investigation of this intermolecular imprinting approach. This comprises studies of the relative contribution of the orthogonally interacting functional monomers, their structural tuning and the choice of different matrix and crosslinking monomers. The impact of these parameters on the molecular recognition properties for the saccharide templates and glycosylated targets will be reported.

[1] Fuster M. M., Esko J. D., (2005) The sweet and sour of cancer: glycans as novel therapeutic targets. Nat. Rev. Cancer 5: 526-542.

[2] Shinde S., Sellergren B., (2015) Sialic Acid-Imprinted Fluorescent Core−Shell Particles for Selective Labeling of Cell Surface Glycans. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 137: 13908-13912.