A group from Department of Oral Oncology, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Ichikawa General Hospital, Tokyo Dental College, Ichikawa-Shi, Chiba, Japan, etc. has reported that MUC1 modified with α2,3-linked sialic acid-containing core-2 O-glycans could be a new potential diagnostic marker of Mucoepidermoid carcinoma (MEC).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10082819/
Salivary gland tumours account for approximately 1% of all tumours and 3–6% of head and neck tumours. MEC is the most frequent of the rare salivary gland malignancies. MEC has a distinct feature of producing mucus and abnormally expressing Mucin 1 (MUC1), a type of mucin that is a heavily glycosylated, high-molecular-weight glycoprotein. It was found that MEC produced MUC1 distinctively modified by sialylated core-2 O-glycans (GlcNAcβ1-6(Galβ1-3)GalNAcαSer/Thr), and further, the MUC1 modified with core-2 O-glycans containing α2,3-linked sialic acid is expressed in mucous cells and non-mucous cells of MEC.