Applicability of the multiplex quantitative antibody array system for early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

To develop an early and accurate detection method for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) based on detection of tumor-associated serum markers using a multiplex quantitative antibody array. The double-antibody sandwich principle was used to establish an antibody array composed of eight cancer-related serum markers, including alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), insulin-like growth factor (IGF), interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-8 (IL-8), interleukin-10 (IL-10), transforming growth factor-beta 1 (TGF-b1), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Serum samples from 160 cases of clinically diagnosed HCC and from 58 cases of liver cirrhosis (LC; controls) were obtained to test the array. Sixty percent of the samples were randomly selected for use as the training set (HCC, n = 96; LC, n = 36), and the remaining 40% was used as the test set (HCC, n = 64; LC, n = 22). The SPSS statistical software was used to perform logistic regression analysis and to create a diagnostic model. When used with the training set, the model had sensitivity of 93.3%, specificity of 83.3%, and accuracy of 90.9%. When used with the test set, the model had sensitivity of 89.0%, specificity of 77.3%, and accuracy of 86.0%. The traditional serum AFP value (cut-off value of 20 ng/mL) showed 70.0% diagnostic sensitivity, 59.0% specificity, and 64.0% accuracy. The newly developed multiplex quantitative antibody detection system has high sensitivity and specificity. The diagnostic model with AFP and seven other cancer-related factors was superior to the traditional AFP only approach for early diagnosis of liver cancer, indicating its potential clinical value.