Work

Peripheral blood tumor aberrantly glycosylated proteins are associated with disease progression in lung cancer

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: This study investigated tumor aberrantly glycosylated proteins (TAGPs) as a novel serum biomarker for lung cancer. By analyzing their associations with clinicopathological features and conventional markers, we evaluated the diagnostic efficacy of TAGPs in discriminating lung cancer from benign pulmonary diseases. We quantitatively measured the aggregate area of TAGPs in peripheral blood from 179 patients with lung cancer and 100 patients with benign pulmonary diseases using an optical microscopy-based image analysis system. We performed Pearson correlation and ROC curve analyses to evaluate the relationships between TAGPs levels, clinical parameters, and conventional tumor markers, and to assess the diagnostic performance of our combined models across different histological subtypes of lung cancer. We found that the aggregate TAGPs area in the peripheral blood of patients with lung cancer was significantly higher than that in patients with benign pulmonary diseases ( P < 0.05). Consistent with this elevation, higher TAGPs levels were significantly associated with malignant pleural effusion, distant metastasis, and advanced clinical stage (all P < 0.05). Furthermore, TAGPs levels were markedly higher in patients with lung adenocarcinoma (LAC) than in those with other histological subtypes ( P < 0.05). In terms of diagnostic performance, TAGPs demonstrated a sensitivity of 89.39% and a specificity of 94.00% for identifying lung cancer. Moreover, when combined with CEA and CA19-9, TAGPs showed the strongest diagnostic value in LAC (AUC = 0.71), exceeding the performance in squamous cell carcinoma (AUC = 0.61) and small cell lung cancer (AUC = 0.63). As a novel blood-based biomarker, TAGPs may serve as a valuable adjunct to lung cancer screening and diagnosis, providing new insights for improving early clinical detection.

Source: Discover Oncology

DOI: 10.1007/s12672-026-05816-1

Authors: Biaoxue Rong, Qiaoran Li, Chuan Gao, Hui Pan, Pan Yang, Tian Fu

Institutions: Xi'an Medical University, First Hospital of Xi'an, Gansu Provincial Hospital, Jining First People's Hospital

Language: English

Topic: Glycosylation and Glycoproteins Research

Subfield: Molecular Biology

Field: Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Domain: Life Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,690