( that method requires the presence of a...)A sweet step toward new cancer therapies

Hakansson's group has been exploring the use of metals such as calcium and iron to carry the necessary positive charges. In a series of recently published papers, they first showed that their method can be used to selectively cleave different bonds and then demonstrated that it can be used to identify sulfate-laden proteins and to pinpoint the location of the sulfate groups on them.

In the latest research, they extended the technique to sugars, an even more challenging task.

"Sugars are not like other biomolecules," Hakansson said. "They're linked rings with lots of branches, like trees. If you cut off a branch, you don't know which part of the tree it came from." The trick is to make breaks that cut across the ring structures, rather lopping off branches. By using metals as charge carriers, the researchers were able to do just that, yielding valuable structural information.

In a project that continues to build on this line of work, Hakansson is collaborating with U-M Health System cancer surgeon Diane Simeone to investigate sugars attached to proteins in the membranes of pancreatic cancer cells.

"The work is in very early stages, but we hope that by measuring unique sugars it may be possible to develop diagnostic tools or therapeutic agents to specifically target them," Hakansson said.
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Source:University of Michigan