Preoperative assessment of tumor invasiveness is essential to avoid overtreatment for patients with small-sized ground-glass nodules (GGNs) of 10 mm or less in diameter. However, it is difficult to determine the pathological state by computed tomography (CT) examination alone. Aberrant glycans has emerged as a tool to identify novel potential disease biomarkers. In this study, we used a lectin microarray-based strategy to investigate whether glycosylation changes in plasma immunoglobulin G (IgG) provide additional information about the invasiveness of small GGNs before surgery. Two independent cohorts (discovery set, n = 92; test set, n = 210) of GGN patients were used. Five of 45 lectins (Sambucus nigra agglutinin, SNA; Datura stramonium agglutinin, DSA; Galanthus nivalis agglutinin, GNA; Euonymus europaeus lectin, EEL; and Vicia villosa agglutinin, VVA) were identified as independent factors associated with pathological invasiveness of small GGNs (p < 0.01). Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis indicated the combination of these five lectins could significantly improve the accuracy of CT in diagnosing invasive GGNs, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.792 (p < 0.001), a sensitivity of 74.6%, and specificity of 74.4%, which was superior to current clinical biomarkers. These results suggest that the multilectin assay based on plasma IgG glycosylation may be a useful in vitro complementary test to enhance preoperative determination of the invasiveness of GGNs and guide surgeons to select proper clinical management to avoid overtreatment.
Keywords: glycobiomarker; ground glass nodule (GGN); immunoglobulin G (IgG); lectin microarray; multilectin assay.