Lung cancer (LC) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are prevalent ailments with a great challenge to distinguish them based on symptoms only. Since they require different treatments, it is important to find non-invasive methods capable to readily diagnose them. Moreover, COPD increases the risk of lung cancer development, leading to their comorbidity. In this pilot study the N-glycosylation profile of pooled human serum samples (90 patients each) from lung cancer, COPD and comorbidity (LC with COPD) patients were investigated in comparison to healthy individuals (control) by capillary gel electrophoresis with high sensitivity laser-induced fluorescence detection. Sample preparation was optimized for human serum samples introducing a new temperature adjusted denaturation protocol to prevent precipitation and increased endoglycosidase digestion time to assure complete removal of the N-linked carbohydrates. The reproducibility of the optimized method was <3.5%. Sixty-one N-glycan structures were identified in the pooled control human serum sample and the profile was compared to pooled lung cancer, COPD and comorbidity of COPD with lung cancer patient samples. One important findings was that no other sugar structures were detected in any of the patient groups, only quantitative differences were observed. Based on this comparative exercise, a panel of 13 N-glycan structures were identified as potential glycobiomarkers to reveal significant changes (>33% in relative peak areas) between the pathological and control samples. In addition to N-glycan profile changes, alterations in the individual N-glycan subclasses, such as total fucosylation, degree of sialylation and branching may also hold important glycobiomarker values.

肺癌（LC）和慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）是普遍存在的疾病，仅根据症状来区分它们是一个巨大的挑战。由于它们需要不同的治疗方法，因此重要的是找到能够轻易诊断出它们的非侵入性方法。而且，COPD增加了肺癌发展的风险，导致其合并症。在本试验研究中，N-通过毛细管凝胶电泳和高灵敏度激光诱导的荧光检测，与健康人（对照组）相比，研究了肺癌，COPD和合并症（LC合并COPD）患者的合并人血清样本（每个90例）的糖基化谱。针对人血清样品优化了样品制备，引入了新的温度调节变性程序以防止沉淀并增加糖苷内切酶消化时间，以确保完全去除N-连接的碳水化合物。优化方法的重现性<3.5％。六十一N-在合并的对照人血清样品中鉴定了聚糖结构，并将其与合并的肺癌，COPD和COPD与肺癌患者样品的合并症进行了比较。一个重要发现是，在任何患者组中均未检测到其他糖结构，仅观察到定量差异。基于此比较研究，一组13种N-聚糖结构被鉴定为潜在的糖生物标志物，可揭示病理样品与对照样品之间的显着变化（相对峰面积> 33％）。除了N-聚糖谱变化外，各个N-聚糖亚类的改变，例如总岩藻糖基化，唾液酸化程度和分支，也可能具有重要的糖生物标志物值。