Clinical Profile of a New Monoclonal Antibody-Based Immunoassay for Tissue Polypeptide Antigen

Abstract

Our preliminary evaluation of a new monoclonal antibody-based assay for tissue polypeptide antigen (TPA) has shown it to be clinically equivalent to the polyclonal antibody-based assay for TPA. The new assay (TPA-M) employs three monoclonal antibodies to epitopes on cytokeratins 8, 18 and 19. This multicenter, multinational study included 266 patients with newly diagnosed carcinomas of the lung, breast, large bowel and urinary bladder. TPA values from the two assays were compared with three other cytokeratin markers (TPS, CYFRA 21-1 and TPACyk) and with the established reference markers for these malignancies (CEA and NSE for lung, CA 15-3 for breast, CEA and CA 19-9 for colorectal tumors). Analysis of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves in lung, colorectal and bladder cancer showed similar sensitivities for the two assays, ranging from 50% to 80% with a specificity of 95%. In breast cancer all the markers studied showed poor sensitivity. However, TPA determination by either method could discriminate advanced stage (stages III and IV) from early stage disease (stages 0 to II). TPA showed similar discriminating ability in bladder cancer. On the basis of the results obtained in our patient series, it seems that of the cytokeratin markers studied, TPA and TPA-M are the most sensitive and offer a wide range of clinical applications.

Relationship Between the Levels of Oxidative Stress in Mesenteric and Peripheral Serum and Clinicopathological Variables in Colorectal Cancer

“…They may oxidatively activate chemical carcinogenesis. Many studies have investigated most tumor markers, attempting to understand all the possible ways to use them in the diagnosis, staging, prognosis, and detection of tumor recurrences (11,12).…”

Establishment and characterization of a cell line (OMC-9) originating from a human endometrial stromal sarcoma

“…Since proliferating cells of cancerous, as well as non‐cancerous, tissues produce and release TPA, serum TPA level was considered to be useful as a marker of cell proliferation 22 . Consequently, in 1994, a detection system for TPA was developed with monoclonal antibodies directed against various epitopes of three different cytokeratins: 8, 18 and 19 23 . TPA was then exploited as a tumor marker, exhibiting improved diagnostic sensitivity but lacking specificity.…”

Comparison of Tissue Polypeptide Antigen (TPA) with Cancer Antigen 15-3 (CA 15-3) and Carcino-embryonic Antigen (CEA) in Follow-up of Breast Cancer

“…The utility of a tumour marker for diagnosis and therapeutic assessment is described by its diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative PV and efficiency. In contrast TPA was discussed for differential diagnosis between benign and malign diseases of lung, breast, colon-rectum and bladder by Correale et al (14). The ROC curves must be calculated to assess the diagnostic accuracy of a tumour marker (6,7).…”