{"doi":"10.1093/glycob/cwab083","title":"Major differences in glycosylation and fucosyltransferase expression in low-grade versus high-grade bladder cancer cell lines","abstract":"Bladder cancer is the ninth most frequently diagnosed cancer worldwide, and there is a need to develop new biomarkers for staging and prognosis of this disease. Here we report that cell lines derived from low-grade and high-grade bladder cancers exhibit major differences in expression of glycans in surface glycoproteins. We analyzed protein glycosylation in three low-grade bladder cancer cell lines RT4 (grade-1-2), 5637 (grade-2), and SW780 (grade-1), and three high-grade bladder cancer cell lines J82COT (grade-3), T24 (grade-3) and TCCSUP (grade-4), with primary bladder epithelial cells, A/T/N, serving as a normal bladder cell control. Using a variety of approaches including flow cytometry, immunofluorescence, glycomics and gene expression analysis, we observed that the low-grade bladder cancer cell lines RT4, 5637 and SW780 express high levels of the fucosylated Lewis-X antigen (Lex, CD15) (Galβ1-4(Fucα1-3)GlcNAcβ1-R), while normal bladder epithelial A/T/N cells lack Lex expression. T24 and TCCSUP cells also lack Lex, whereas J82COT cells express low levels of Lex. Glycomics analyses revealed other major differences in fucosylation and sialylation of N-glycans between these cell types. O-glycans are highly differentiated, as RT4 cells synthesize core 2-based O-glycans that are lacking in the T24 cells. These differences in glycan expression correlated with differences in RNA expression levels of their cognate glycosyltransferases, including α1-3/4-fucosyltransferase genes. These major differences in glycan structures and gene expression profiles between low- and high-grade bladder cancer cells suggest that glycans and glycosyltransferases are candidate biomarkers for grading bladder cancers.","journal":"Glycobiology","year":2021,"id":192172,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":12,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9527,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":432263,"name":"Nandini Mondal","orcid":"0000-0001-9508-3280","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":288033,"name":"Aristotelis Antonopoulos","orcid":"0000-0002-1592-4092","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":288040,"name":"Stuart M. Haslam","orcid":"0000-0002-5563-679X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292908,"name":"Yasuyuki Matsumoto","orcid":"0000-0003-2606-2616","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":758704,"name":"Miguel Martin‐Caraballo","orcid":"0000-0002-1094-4676","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":266359,"name":"Sylvain Lehoux","orcid":"0000-0001-6783-5625","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":372322,"name":"Msano Mandalasi","orcid":"0000-0002-5906-7387","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":759208,"name":"Ali Ishaque","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":378381,"name":"Jamie Heimburg‐Molinaro","orcid":"0000-0003-4987-3016","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231529,"name":"Richard D. Cummings","orcid":"0000-0002-8918-5034","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":759209,"name":"A. Kwame Nyame","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":759207,"name":"Bernadette Ezeabikwa","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":72,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:49:39.281850Z","pmid":"34350945","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}