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Head and neck cancer and p53-immunogenicity
J D Maass1, S Gottschlich, T Goeroegh
1Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, University of Kiel, Germany.
Background:
p53-mutations are of major importance in the development of human malignancies and occur frequently in head and neck cancer. The detection of serum p53-antibodies has been performed for a number of different cancers. For head and neck cancer though, the occurrence of serum p53-antibodies has not been determined so far.
Materials And Methods:
A set of 82 sera from patients with squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck were screened for circulating antibodies against p53 with ELISA.
Results:
Of 82 patients 22% (n = 18) demonstrated p53-antibodies in their sera; the specificity for malignancy was 100%.
Conclusions:
As far as we know, this is the first study to reveal p53-antibodies in the sera of patients with SCCHN. The high incidence of positivity for p53-antibodies in this subset of cancer patients may give additional help in the diagnosis of this often disfiguring disease.