Serum immunoinflammatory-related protein complexes as personalized biomarkers for monitoring disease progression and response to treatment in lung cancer patients

Abstract

BackgroundAlthough routine surveillance to detect lung cancer recurrence with clinical imaging is recommended, early detection of disease progression has a major role in avoiding over-treatment. MethodsHere, serum immunoinflammatory-related protein complexes (IIRPCs) of a series of 1331 serum samples collected from 119 patients during the follow-up period were isolated using native-PAGE and then their levels were quantified. The associations of representative IIRPCs levels at their beginning, maximum, and minimum and the ratios of the maximum or minimum to the beginning IIRPCs levels with clinical characteristics were statistically analyzed. ResultsThe statistical results indicate that patients with these ratios below the first quantiles of the minimum ratios had shorter progressive-free survival (PFS) and the follow-up time points for 108 of 113 patients with over 1.5-fold change in IIRPCs level relative to the beginning level as the beginning time point of humoral immune response has a median lead time of 61.9 weeks (IQR, 30.9–105.3) relative to progressive disease(PD) detected using clinical imaging. ConclusionsThese findings suggest that changes in IIRPCs levels may be early-warning signals of disease progression and response to treatment for lung cancer patients.