Evaluation of a panel of tumor-associated antigens in breast cancer

Recent studies indicate that serum from cancer patients contains auto-antibodies against oncoproteins so called tumor-associated antigens (TAAs), which represent promising diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers.

In this study we searched for breast cancer-associated auto-antibodies against individual TAAs. Also we evaluated if a panel of multiple TTAs would improve the detection of auto-antibodies. We screened CEA, CCBN1, c-Myc, p53, Ki-67, Nm23, PRDX6, eIF5A, PARK7, GLIO-1, Hsp27 and Hsp70 proteins, previously detected as up-regulated in breast tumors of Mexican patients.

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) were performed to detect auto-antibodies in sera from a cohort of 104 breast cancer patients and 50 sera from healthy individuals.

Our data showed that antibodies frequency to any individual TAA was low and ranged from 0.96% to 4.8%. However, the successive addition of multiple TAAs represented by panels of three-to-five TAAs resulted in increased ELISA positive reactions. The first panel of three combined TAAs (p53/PRDX6/CEA) had a sensitivity of 19%, while a second set of four TAAs (p53/PRDX6/c-Myc/Hsp70) reached 28% sensitivity. Likewise, a third panel of five antigens (p53/PRDX6/c-Myc/Hsp70/Nm23) showed 34% sensitivity.

Our data showed that detection of individual autoantibodies against TAAs in the cohort of patients analyzed here was low, which was enhanced by adding multiple TAAs. Data support the notion that frequencies of autoantibodies could be impacted by geographical and heterogeneous genetic factors of breast cancer patients.