Recent progress and new perspectives in lymphoma glycobiology.

Glycosylation has recently become one of the most significant subjects in tumor biology, and cell surface glycosylation is closely associated with various biological phenomena in tumor cells. However, the biological significance of cell surface glycosylation and sialic acid linked to glycans in human malignant lymphoma is not well elucidated. We have determined that 1) sialylation or loss of N-glycosylation is closely associated with a worse prognosis in human diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), and 2) glycosylation or sialic acid on the surface of lymphoma cells plays significant roles in cell adhesion or invasion to the extracellular matrix, cell growth, apoptosis and cell death. In the present review, the biological functions of glycosylation or sialic acid in human malignant lymphoma are discussed.