α-L-Fucose in Histology: A Part of the Cancer Glycome Hiding in Plain Sight

Copyright: © 2012 Listinsky JJ, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Alpha-L-fucose (“fucose”) is a 6-carbon deoxy-sugar that is found to be contained in major blood group antigens, in Lewis minor blood group antigens and on many epithelial cells. Fucose is incorporated into numerous tumor-associated carbohydrate antigens, and appears to have important functional significance, as well as biomarker significance, in common human cancers [1,2]. Data suggest that diagnosis and prognosis would be aided by detection of fucosylated molecules in tissue samples. Unfortunately, the names of fucosecontaining cancer antigens rarely provide clues that the sugar is, in fact, present. As a result, fucose remains nearly anonymous in the histopathology literature.