For more than two decades, University of Alabama at Birmingham researcher Susan Bellis, Ph.D., has studied how the addition of sialic acid to various proteins increases cancer resistance and oncogenicity.
One of the enzymes that transfers sialic acid to target glycoproteins is ST6Gal-I, and it has attracted increased attention in the cancer field in recent years. ST6Gal-I is upregulated in breast cancer, gliomas, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer and ovarian cancer, and it plays a key role in tumor progression and metastasis.
