[Clinical significance of serum DU-PAN-2 surveyed by solid-phase sandwich EIA for DU-PAN-2]

The clinical usefulness of DU-PAN-2 as a tumor marker was investigated. DU-PAN-2 antigen was detected by enzyme immunoassay based on sandwiching the antigen between monoclonal antibodies to DU-PAN-2. The EIA kit was supplied from Kyowa Medex Co. The mean DU-PAN-2 concentration in sera from 53 healthy donors was 51.8 U/ml and the mean plus 2 S.D. value was 156.2 U/ml. A level of 160 U/ml was used as the cut-off value. Serum DU-PAN-2 was positive in 7.5% of healthy donors, 16.9% of 83 patients with benign disease and 37.7% of 159 cancer patients. Of the cancer patients, those with pancreatic cancer, bile duct cancer and primary liver cell cancer had a high positive frequency of more than 70%. On the other hand, of patients with benign diseases, a high positive incidence of 40% or 50% was observed in patients with chronic hepatitis or liver cirrhosis. From this result, DU-PAN-2 appeared to be useful as a tumor for pancreatic cancer and bile duct cancer. Determination of the molecular weight of DU-PAN-2 in serum from a pancreatic cancer patient by Sepharose 4B gel filtration demonstrated the existence as a high-molecular-weight protein between about M.W. 500-10,000 K Da.