Although the importance of glycans in malignant cell behavior is well documented, the potential involvement of endogenous lectins as modifiers of progression and metastasis in the tumor microenvironment has not been explored. In this study, we show that loss of the hepatic asialoglycoprotein receptor (ASGPR) in mice severely reduces the frequency of spontaneous lung metastasis after intrahepati...

In a search for genes expressed by dendritic cells (DC), we have cloned cDNAs encoding different forms of an asialoglycoprotein receptor (ASGPR). The DC-ASGPR represents long and short isoforms of human macrophage lectin, a Ca(2+)-dependent type II transmembrane lectin displaying considerable homology with the H1 and H2 subunits of the hepatic ASGPR. Immunoprecipitation from DC using an anti-DC...