DO HPA AND PHA-L HAVE THE SAME BINDING PATTERN IN METASTASIZING HUMANBREAST AND COLON CANCERS

Glycoconjugates on the tumour cell surface are functionally important for the interaction of the tumour cell with its environment. Several s tudies have demonstrated that particular carbohydrate residues on prim ary cancers are associated with metastasis. Identification of such res idues is possible using lectins, including Helix pomatia agglutinin (H PA) which has a nominal monosaccharide specificity for N-acetyl galact osamine (GalNAc) and Phaseolus vulgaris leucoagglutinin (PHA-L) which recognizes beta 1-6 branched oligosaccharides. Both lectins have been reported to be valuable prognostic markers in breast and colon cancers . In the present study, the binding patterns of both lectins were inve stigated on serial sections of human breast cancers and on metastatic and non-metastatic human breast and colon cancer cell lines grown in s evere combined immunodeficient (SCID) mice. The two lectins gave very different staining patterns and HPA was more often associated with met astases than PHA-L. Our results indicate that both lectins are not sim ply recognizing different oligosaccharides associated with the same co mmon metastasis-related glycoconjugate. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Irel and Ltd.