Every living cell’s surface has a protein-embedded membrane that’s covered in polysaccharide chains—a literal sugar coating. A new study found this coating is especially thick and pronounced on cancer cells and is a crucial determinant of the cell’s survival. Consisting of long, sugar-decorated molecules called glycoproteins, the coating causes physicalchanges in the cell membrane that make the cell better able to thrive, leading to a more lethal cancer.
Matthew Paszek, PhD, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Cornell, and Valerie Weaver, PhD, at the University of California, San Francisco, led the study on glycoprotein-induced cancer cell survival, published online in Nature.
