H-type lectins - Structural characteristics and their applications in diagnostics, analytics and drug delivery.

Agnieszka J Pietrzyk-Brzezinska, Anna Bujacz

International journal of biological macromolecules 2020 Jun 01

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Lectins are ubiquitous carbohydrate-binding proteins that interact with sugar moieties in a highly specific manner. H-type lectins represent a new group of lectins that were identified in invertebrates. These lectins share structural homology and bind mainly to N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc). Recent structural studies on the H-type lectins provided a detailed description of the GalNAc-lectin interaction that is already exploited in a number of biomedical applications. Two members of the H-type lectin family, Helix pomatia agglutinin (HPA) and Helix aspersa agglutinin (HAA), have already been extensively used in many diagnostic tests due their ability to specifically recognize GalNAc. This ability is especially important because aberrant glycosylation patterns of proteins expressed by cancer cells contain GalNAc. In addition, H-type lectins were utilized in diagnostics of other non-cancer diseases and represent great potential as components of drug delivery systems. Here, we present an overview of the H-type lectins and their applications in diagnostics, analytics and drug delivery. Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Citation

Agnieszka J Pietrzyk-Brzezinska, Anna Bujacz. H-type lectins - Structural characteristics and their applications in diagnostics, analytics and drug delivery. International journal of biological macromolecules. 2020 Jun 01;152:735-747