Research advances in urinary glycosylation for the development of disease biomarkers

In association with Georgetown University, Zhejiang Provincial People’s Hospital, Dushu Lake Hospital Affiliated to Soochow University, and the Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Prof Shuang Yang’s research group recently published a review paper entitled “Protein Glycosylation in Urine as a Biomarker of Diseases” in Translational Research (IF=10.171).

As a non-invasive and easily available biological fluid, urine is becoming an important source for disease biomarker study. Without homeostasis mechanisms, urine can accommodate more changes, especially in the early stages of diseases. Aberrant protein glycosylation is associated with the occurrence and progression of various diseases. However, a thorough and translational survey of urinary glycosylation in diseases has not been performed. In this review, the clinical applications of urine were evaluated, and methods for urine glycosylation analysis were introduced. The importance of mining urinary glycoproteins and searching for disease-specific glycosylation in various diseases was emphasized. With advances in mass spectrometry-based glycomics/glycoproteomics/glycopeptidomics, the characterization of disease-specific glycosylation will optimistically lead to the discovery of disease-related urinary biomarkers with better sensitivity and specificity in the near future.

This project is supported by the start-up fund of Soochow University, the Priority Academic Program Development of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutes, the special fund of the Jiangsu Science and Technology Plan, and the Jiangsu Shuangchuang Doctoral Fund. The first author Dr. Mingming Xu is a postdoctoral research fellow, and the corresponding author is Prof Shuang Yang.

Figure 1. Aberrant glycosylation reflects the progression of cancer

Figure 2. Workflow for the discovery and validation of urinary biomarkers

Reference：

Mingming Xu, Arthur Yang, Jun Xia, Junhong Jiang, Chun-Feng Liu, Zhenyu Ye, Junfeng Ma*, Shuang Yang*, Translational Research 2022, 247, DOI: 10.1016/j.trsl.2022.08.001.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trsl.2022.08.001

Authors：

1. Corresponding author

Prof Shuang Yang is a distinguished professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis. His research interests focus on cell membrane glycosylation and the development of glycoprotein biomarkers for clinical applications. He has published over 70 SCI papers, includingNat Protoc, Nat Rev Chem, Nat Microbiol, Nat Biotechnol, Metab Eng,Anal ChemandLab Chip.

2. First author

Dr. Mingming Xu is a postdoctoral research fellow, and his research mainly focuses on the development of glycosylation biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases and malignant cancers. He has published 18 SCI papers, including eight first-author articles.