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©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. Mar 24, 2020; 11(3): 110-120
Published online Mar 24, 2020. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v11.i3.110
Published online Mar 24, 2020. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v11.i3.110
Glycoconjugation: An approach to cancer therapeutics
Maria I Molejon, Gisela Weiz, Javier D Breccia, Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences from La Pampa (INCITAP), National University of La Pampa, School of Natural Sciences (CONICET-UNLPam), Santa Rosa 6300, La Pampa, Argentina
Maria I Molejon, Maria Ines Vaccaro, Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine (UBA-CONICET), Department of Pathophysiology, School of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires C1113AAD, Argentina
Author contributions: Molejon MI and Weiz W reviewed and searched the literature, wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and prepared the table and the figure; Breccia JD and Vaccaro MI discussed the conclusions, and revised the manuscript, table, and figure; all the authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Supported by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica , No. ANPCyT-PICT2018-02032 RES-2019-401-APN-DANPCYT#ANPCYT (To Molejon MI), No. ANPCyT-PICT2017-2070 RES-2017-310/18 (To Breccia JD), and No. ANPCyT-PICT2016-2258 RES-2017-285-APN-DANPCYT#MCT ; University of Buenos Aires-UBACyT2018, RES(CS) Nº 1041/18 (To Vaccaro MI) ; the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and the National University of La Pampa. Weiz W is a CONICET postdoctoral fellow .
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Maria Ines Vaccaro, AGAF, PhD, Doctor, Professor, Superior Researcher, Chair Professor, Department of Physiopathology, University of Buenos Aires, Junín 954, Ciudad de Buenos Aires C1113AAD, Argentina. mvaccaro@ffyb.uba.ar
Received: October 22, 2019
Peer-review started: October 22, 2019
First decision: November 27, 2019
Revised: January 31, 2020
Accepted: February 8, 2020
Article in press: February 8, 2020
Published online: March 24, 2020
Peer-review started: October 22, 2019
First decision: November 27, 2019
Revised: January 31, 2020
Accepted: February 8, 2020
Article in press: February 8, 2020
Published online: March 24, 2020
Core Tip
Core tip: In nature, glycosylation has proven an effective strategy for expanding the biologic information of biomolecules by adding a new level of structural diversity. The high specificity of the interaction with carbohydrates and the overexpression of carbohydrate receptors in tumoral cells that can be specifically targeted by glycodrugs enable a selective administration of those agents to the tumor tissues. Accordingly, the glycosylation of antitumor agents has been found to improve pharmacokinetic parameters, reduce side effects, expand drug half-life, and reduce the dosage of the consequent glycoderivatives.