In support of our in vitro findings, we demonstrate significantly reduced homing and engraftment of ST3GAL6 knockdown MM cells to the bone marrow niche in vivo, along with decreased tumor burden and prolonged survival.
We found that genes involved in the synthesis of sialyl-Lewis x (sLe(x); FUT3, FUT4, and ST3GAL6) are significantly increased in estrogen receptor alpha-negative (ER-negative) tumors compared with ER-positive ones.
The results indicate that the occurrence of CD75s- and iso-CD75s-gangliosides in tumor tissues is largely independent of the transcriptional expression of ST6GAL1 and ST3GAL6, respectively.