You may not know what a lysoganglioside is off the top of your head. I didn't. I took chemistry back in 1982 and took biochemistry right before medical school in 1989.

However, when I start reading about lysoganglioside, I have absolutely heard of an anti-lysoganglioside: taxol, also known as paclitaxel. Because it is a chemotheraputic agent and grundoon was on it for breast cancer.

Here is an article Taxol® that describes what taxol/paclitaxel does: "Paclitaxel is a compound extracted from the Pacific yew tree Taxus brevifolia with antineoplastic activity. Paclitaxel binds to tubulin and inhibits the disassembly of microtubules, thereby resulting in the inhibition of cell division. This agent also induces apoptosis by binding to and blocking the function of the apoptosis inhibitor protein Bcl-2 (B-cell Leukemia 2). (NCI04)" Look. There is that tubulin again.

When I read taxol, I panic and minimize the screen and leave the computer. Because I was diagnosed with PANDAS in 2012 by a physician and now the literature says that people who have PANDAS make an antibody to lysogangliosides. Wait, what? A chemotheraputic agent?

Well, not necessarily. I think that I make an antibody but antibodies can do different things. An antibody can fit a receptor and turn it on. Or an antibody can fit a receptor and just block it. Essentially turning it off.

So, if it's an antibody that turns lysogangliosides ON, that is a potential chemotheraputic agent. How many lysogangliosides do we have? I don't know. Have we identified them all? What if some are turned on and some are blocked? Taxol/paclitaxel is from the Pacific Yew tree and inhibits cell division. That kills cancer cells and it also kills the non-cancerous cells, especially any fast growing ones.

If it is an antibody that turns lysogangliosides OFF, that could do something.... cause cancer? Here is another paper: Partial synthesis of ganglioside and lysoganglioside lipoforms as internal standards for MS quantification. So, they are extracting lysogangliosides from cow brains. About gangliosides: "Gangliosides are sialic acid-containing glycosphingolipids (GSLs). They can be found in vertebrates and, with a few exceptions, not in invertebrates (1). Gangliosides are especially abundant in neuronal tissues, where their content is one to two orders of magnitude higher than in extraneural tissues (2). In the brain, gangliosides, together with other GSLs, are the main glycan carriers (80% of the total glycan mass in adult rat brain) (3). The main gangliosides in adult mammalian brain are GM1 (Fig. 1), GD1a, GD1b, GT1b, 9-O-Ac-GT1b, and GQ1b (4). They contain mostly C18- and C20-sphingosine acylated with stearic acid, which constitutes more than 80% of the total ganglioside fatty acid content in the nervous system (4). In mammals, C20-sphingsosine-containing gangliosides can only be found in significant amounts in the nervous system (5). In contrast to adult brain, different GSL and ganglioside series are expressed in the developing nervous system (6)." There is a nice picture of a ganglioside. So, gangliosides are fats, mostly in mammal brains. And they carry glycan, which means sugars. Lysogangliosides would presumably break down gangliosides. Since gangliosides are fats, things that break them down are soaps. Anti lysoganglioside antibodies would either increase the brain soap or decrease it....

Other papers include What does the cunningham panel measure? which shows the four labs to run to check for PANS or PANDAS.

Anti-lysoganglioside and other anti-neuronal autoantibodies in post-treatment Lyme Disease and Erythema Migrans after repeat infection. This paper would be more about PANS, because it is measuring the three autoantibodies (which means the antibodies attack our own tissues) after Lyme disease.

Preparation of various lysogangliosides including lyso-fucosyl GM1 and delayed extraction matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometric analysis. This paper is a bit beyond me at the moment but talks about saponification of rat and porcine brain tissue. I suspect that I would not like having my brain any more saponified than it already is....

There are other papers, but that is enough for me for now. Gangliosides are brain fats that carry sugar. Lysogangliosides seem to be soaps that break them down. Autoantibodies to lysoganliosides seem to either upregulate or downregulate the effect which in turn seems to affect cancer. So is taxol/paclitaxel a SOAP?

How amazing.

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