Differentiating N-linked glycan structural isomers in metastatic and nonmetastatic tumor cells using sequential mass spectrometry

In an effort to understand the role of molecular glycosylationin cancer a murine model has been used to characterize and fingerprintmalignancies in established cell lines that manifest all thehallmarks of metastatic disease: spontaneous development, localinvasion, intravasation, immune system survival, extravasation,and secondary tumor formation involving liver, kidney, spleen,lung, and brain. Using astrocyte cell controls, we comparedN-linked glycosylation from a nonmetastatic brain tumor cellline and two different metastatic brain tumor cells. Selectedions in each profile were disassembled by ion trap mass spectrometry(MSⁿ) which exhibited multiple structural differences betweeneach tissue. These unique structures were identified withinisomeric compositions as pendant nonreducing termini of di-and trisaccharide fragments, probably transparent to a tandemMS approach but distinctively not to sequential ion trap MSⁿdetection.