Generally, most of
ovarian cancer cannot be detected until large scale and remote
metastasis occurs, which is the major cause of high mortality in
ovarian cancer. Therefore, it is urgent to discover
metastasis-related
biomarkers for the detection of
ovarian cancer in its occult
metastasis stage. Altered glycosylation is a universal feature of
malignancy and certain types of
glycan structures are well-known markers for
tumor progressions. Thus, this study aimed to reveal specific changes of N-
glycans in the secretome of the metastatic
ovarian cancer. We employed a quantitative glycomics approach based on metabolic stable
isotope labeling to compare the differential N-glycosylation of secretome between an
ovarian cancer cell line SKOV3 and its high metastatic derivative SKOV3-ip. Intriguingly, among total 17 N-
glycans identified, the N-
glycans with bisecting GlcNAc were all significantly decreased in SKOV3-ip in comparison to SKOV3. This alteration in bisecting GlcNAc glycoforms as well as its corresponding association with
ovarian cancer metastatic behavior was further validated at the glycotransferase level with multiple techniques including real-time PCR, western blotting, transwell assay,
lectin blotting and immunohistochemistry analysis. This study illustrated
metastasis-related N-
glycan alterations in
ovarian cancer secretome in vitro for the first time, which is a valuable source for
biomarker discovery as well. Moreover, N-
glycans with bisecting GlcNAc shed light on the detection of
ovarian cancer in early peritoneal
metastasis stage which may accordingly improve the prognosis of
ovarian cancer patients.