Abstract
Increased alpha-fetoprotein receptor in the serum of patients with early-stage breast cancer
Highlights
Alpha-fetoprotein is a major fetal serum protein [1,2,3,4] that is synthesized mainly by the yolk sac and liver [2,5]
The biotinylated-afp detected a faint 67-kDa band that was absent from the Western blot done with the antiserum. (It is worth noting that the afp receptor has previously been described as a 62/67 kDa doublet found both in soluble form and associated to membranes 22,23.) The rabbit antiserum inhibited the binding of biotinylated-afp to recaf, which indicates that they both recognize the same recaf epitope
The results presented here show that a recaf-based serum immunoassay can discriminate, with high sensitivity and specificity, 504 normal subjects and 50 patients with benign breast lesions from 147 patients with breast cancer
Summary
Alpha-fetoprotein (afp) is a major fetal serum protein [1,2,3,4] that is synthesized mainly by the yolk sac and liver [2,5]. In vitro and in vivo studies showed that malignant cells regain the ability to take up afp via a receptor that would be present in undifferentiated cells of either embryonic or tumour origin [10,11,12,13,14,15], but mostly absent in normal adult cells. The existence of such a receptor for afp (recaf) was demonstrated and functionally characterized in several cell lines [16,17,18]
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