Abstract

Most scientific efforts towards early detection of ovarian cancer are commonly focused on the discovery of tumour-associated antigens (TAA). Autologous antibodies against TAA, however, may serve as more sensitive diagnostic markers. They circulate in the blood before TAA and are usually more abundant than the TAAs themselves as a result of amplification through the humoral immune response. Accumulating evidence also suggests that a humoral response already exists during malignant transformation when aberrant gene expression is translated into premalignant cellular changes. This article reviews the current knowledge about autoantibodies against TAA in ovarian cancer and presents current immunoproteomic approaches for their detection.

Highlights

  • Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death from gynaecological malignancies [1,2]

  • Combination of the three biomarkers, IL-8, IL-8 autoantibodies and cancer antigen 125 (CA125) resulted in an increase in the sensitivity to 87.5% compared to CA125 alone (76.8%) without compromising specificity (98%)

  • These results suggest a potential value of stress-induced phosphoprotein-1 (STIP-1) autoantibodies as a biomarker for ovarian cancer; the relevance for detecting early stage disease remains unclear

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death from gynaecological malignancies [1,2]. It accounts for. The poor prognosis and high mortality rate associated with the disease have not significantly improved over the last 30 years despite advances in treatment [3] This arises as ovarian cancer development is largely asymptomatic resulting in the majority of patients (62%) presenting with advanced disease (FIGO stage III and IV) [2]. To date transvaginal ultrasonography (TVU) and serum levels of the cancer antigen 125 (CA125) are used alone or in combination to diagnose ovarian cancer Both approaches have limitations that render them inappropriate for screening the general population. Due to the low lifetime risk of an individual woman developing ovarian cancer in the population (1.4%) the minimum requirements for a global screening strategy to detect early ovarian cancer are benchmarked at >75% sensitivity and 99.6% specificity [6,7]. Novel ovarian cancer biomarkers with high specificity and sensitivity are warranted

Biomarkers
Phage Display
Protein Microarray
Immunoaffinity Purification Methods
Findings
Conclusion
Full Text
Paper version not known

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call