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Use of bacterially expressed EBNA-1 protein cloned from a nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) biopsy as a screening test
1Graduate Institute of Microbiology, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Abstract:
EBV serological tests have been used for many years as accessory diagnostic predictors of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). To increase the sensitivity and specificity of the NPC detection rate, a novel enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was established using a bacterially-expressed GST-EBNA-1 protein, containing the EBNA-1 sequence cloned from an NPC patient. Serum samples were collected from age- and gender-matched patients with NPC, community control subjects and hospital control patients and tested using this ELISA. The positivity rates were 78.7% (247/314) in NPC, 11.5% (28/244) in hospital controls and 3.8% (10/263) in the community control group. These serum samples were also tested for IgA anti-VCA antibodies and their ability to neutralize EBV DNase and the sensitivities of the anti-VCA antibody and DNase-neutralization tests also were analyzed. The optimum combination is VCA plus EBNA-1, which can identify 92.5% (287/310) of NPC patients, and shows a specificity of 92.7% (242/261) for normal individuals.