The early detection of cancer is the primary determinant of increasing the 5-year survivability of the patient following its diagnosis. Pancreatic cancer has the lowest 5-year survivability of all common cancers. Developing early detection methods for that disease is crucial to increasing its survival rate. Changes in glycoprotein structures in the blood and serum have been detected that correlate strongly with cancer prognosis, specifically, the concentration of the carbohydrate moiety known as CA19-9. Cancer victims with high levels of CA19-9 glycoproteins circulating in their system are known to have significantly shorter prognosis. Using lectins that bind to CA19-9 and HA which binds to α 2-3 sialic acid bonds and α 2-6 sialic acid bonds in microarray tissue slides, the resulting trends in binding gave disappointing results and lowered the confidence that HA can be used as an early detection marker.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/david_nowack/1/