Abstract 1866: Detection of early-stage lung cancer using a novel ELISA for thymidine kinase 1

Abstract

Abstract Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer mortality and early detection will increase the survival of this disease. Thymidine kinase 1 (TK1) is a biomarker indicative of cell proliferation that is elevated in numerous malignancies including lung cancer. TK1 has been found to be elevated early in the development of lung cancer and therefore is an ideal target as an early detection biomarker. We have developed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to detect TK1 in serum. Forty patients with pulmonary nodules and 18 healthy control individuals had serum collected under standard conditions, prior to operative removal of any lesions. All serum samples were analyzed using TK1 radioassay to measure TK1 activity, and TK1 ELISA to measure TK1 concentration. TK1 was significantly elevated in all patients with confirmed lung cancer. This was true even in stage IA, where patients (n=16) had significantly higher TK1 levels than controls. The clearest cut-off was 4.9 nM with an area under the curve of 0.792 for early stage lung cancer. The corresponding sensitivity and specificity was 82.4 and 83.3, respectively. TK1 concentration was a more sensitive and accurate indicator of lung cancer than TK1 activity. Overall, TK1 is significantly elevated in serum of lung cancer patients. This TK1 ELISA is sensitive and specific for detection of lung cancer and further trials with a larger patient base can confirm the potential of this method of detection. Citation Format: Madison K. Ramsden, Melissa M. Alegre, Michael J. Weyant, Daine T. Bennett, Jessica A. Yu, Atif Elnaggar, Richard A. Robison, Kim L. O'Neill. Detection of early-stage lung cancer using a novel ELISA for thymidine kinase 1. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 1866. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-1866