Abstract: Aberrant glycosylation is known to be closely associated with cancer progression, and glycans are synthesized by glycosyltransferases. Therefore, we studied the effect of β4GalT1 on cell behavior in bladder cancer. In this study, human HCV29 non-malignant urothelial cells and YTS1 bladder cancer cells were used as the cell models. The terminal lactosyl epitopes were elevated in YTS1 by lectin staining and the expression of β4GalT1 was found up-regulated in YTS1 compared with HCV29 using western blot and Realtime-PCR test. In TGF-β induced EMT process, the expression of β4GalT1 and terminal lactosyl epitopes significantly increased in TGF-β-treated HCV29. The cell migration increased in β4GalT1 overexpressed HCV29, and the cell migration decreased in β4GalT1 knockdown HCV29, which demonstrated that β4GalT1 could promote the migration of bladder cells. Further research is required to understand the effect of β4GalT1 on the cancer progression.

Key words: &beta, 4GalT1； bladder cancer； glycan； migration