Structures of O-linked oligosaccharides isolated from normal granulocytes, chronic myelogenous leukemia cells, and acute myelogenous leukemia cells.

O-Linked oligosaccharides were isolated from normal granulocytes, chronic myelogenous leukemia cells, and acute myelogenous leukemia cells by alkaline borohydride treatment. Oligosaccharides were fractionated by Sephadex G-50 gel filtration and QAE-Sephadex column chromatography, and their structures were elucidated by fast atom bombardment-mass spectrometry after permethylation and methylation analysis before and after specific exoglycosidase treatments. Results show that normal granulocytes and chronic myelogenous leukemia cells contain a series of O-linked oligosaccharides with the following structure, (formula: see text) where, in normal granulocytes n = 0 is major and n = 1 or 2, and thus polylactosaminyl oligosaccharides are present as minor components. However, these polylactosaminyl oligosaccharides were barely detectable in chronic myelogenous leukemia cells. On the other hand, acute myelogenous leukemia cells, which represent poorly differentiated myeloid cells, mainly contain short O-linked oligosaccharides with 2----6-linked sialic acid as follows. (formula: see text) These results suggest that structures of O-linked oligosaccharides vary in the different maturation stages along the same cell lineage.