Analysis of the Repertoires of Circulating Autoantibodies' Specificities as a Tool for Identification of the Tumor-Associated Antigens: Current Problems and Solutions

The value of serum tumor-associated autoantibodies in screening and diagnosis of gastric cancer

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the clinical value of serum autoantibodies in the screening and diagnosis of gastric cancer.

MATERIALS & METHODS

A total of 570 gastric cancer patients and 373 controls were enrolled in this study. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was employed to quantitatively detect autoantibodies in the tested serum, and statistic modeling was conducted to analyze their relationships with various clinical and pathological parameters.

RESULTS

The results of autoantibody detection in gastric cancer patients were significantly different from those of the control group. A combination of 7 autoantibodies, including CLDN18, CAGE1, CTAG1A, PBRM1, RASSF7, IMMP2L and COPB1, was selected for modeling (AUC = 0.885). The diagnostic specificity was approximately 0.86 when combined 7-TAAs with Helicobacter pylori, while the positive predictive value was increased to 0.94. The abnormal elevation of different TAAs proteins in gastric cancer patients is related to factors such as disease stage, tumor differentiation degree, and invasion depth.

CONCLUSION

The determination of serum autoantibody panel has clinical value in screening and prediction of gastric cancer, and can be used as an auxiliary index in clinical diagnosis. The combination of 7-TAAs and Helicobacter pylori can effectively improve the screening specificity and positive predictive value. The detection results of different proteins were related to the stage of disease, the degree of tumor differentiation and the depth of invasion.

The Autoantibodies against Tumor-Associated Antigens as Potential Blood-Based Biomarkers in Thyroid Neoplasia: Rationales, Opportunities and Challenges

The Autoantibodies targeting Tumor-Associated Antigens (TAA-AAbs) emerge as a result of a variety of tumor-related immunogenic stimuli and may be regarded as the eyewitnesses to the anti-tumor immune response. TAA-AAbs may be readily detected in peripheral blood to unveil the presence of a particular TAA-expressing tumor, and a fair number of TAAs eliciting the tumor-associated autoantibody response have been identified. The potential of TAA-AAbs as tumor biomarkers has been extensively studied in many human malignancies with a major influence on public health; however, tumors of the endocrine system, and, in particular, the well-differentiated follicular cell-derived thyroid neoplasms, remain understudied in this context. This review provides a detailed perspective on and legitimate rationales for the potential use of TAA-AAbs in thyroid neoplasia, with particular reference to the already established diagnostic implications of the TAA-AAbs in human cancer, to the windows for improvement and diagnostic niches in the current workup strategies in nodular thyroid disease and differentiated thyroid cancer that TAA-AAbs may successfully occupy, as well as to the proof-of-concept studies demonstrating the usefulness of TAA-AAbs in thyroid oncology, particularly for the pre-surgical discrimination between tumors of different malignant potential in the context of the indeterminate results of the fine-needle aspiration cytology.