engleski

High performance mass spectrometry for compositional and structural analysis of human brain gangliosides

Gangliosides, sialylated glycosphingolipids, are the most abundant in cells, particularly plasma-membranes, of the mammalian central nervous system. They participate in many vital cellular events such as cell-to-cell communication and signaling. In this contribution our results related to the following topics were presented. Human brain ganglioside composition shows regional, developmental, and ageing specificity, while characteristic changes of the normal pattern have been observed in various neuropathological conditions. Our studies of human brain gangliosides by modern ultra-sensitive mass spectrometric approaches complemented with conventional chromatographic and immunochemical methods documented that specific ganglioside patterns contain much larger number of individual species than previously reported. Advantages of these methodologies for accurate and reliable composition/structure and structure-function analysis of brain gangliosides in health and neurological diseases (brain tumors, Alzheimer’ s disease) were elaborated. Also, challenging aspects of ganglioside investigation as potential diagnostic biomarkers and/or therapeutic targets/agents were summarized.

detection and structural identification of gangliosides; advanced mass spectrometry approaches; biomarkers

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