Enzyme-linked PNA lectin binding assay compared with CA19-9 and CEA radioimmunoassay as a diagnostic blood test for pancreatic cancer

Abstract

Summary Previous studies have shown that sera from patients with pancreatic cancer often contain a mucus glycoprotein that expresses the oncofetal antigen galactose 1-3, N-acetyl galactosamine, which is the T blood group antigen and the binding site for the lectin peanut agglutinin (PNA). An enzyme-linked lectin assay has been developed to quantify PNA-binding glycoproteins in serum and has been evaluated as a serological test for pancreatic cancer. Sera were studied from 53 patients with pancreatic cancer and 154 controls, including benign obstructive jaundice, acute and chronic pancreatitis, chronic liver disease and inflammatory bowel disease. The enzyme-linked peanut lectin assay proved highly reproducible and has 77% sensitivity and 83% specificity for pancreatic cancer, results that are very similar to those achieved in the same sera by CA19-9 radioimmunoassay (75% sensitivity, 82% specificity with the upper limit of normal set at 37uml-1). CEA assay pro.ved less useful (60% sensitivity, 47% specificity). In this study better results were obtained if an upper limit of normal of 50uml-1 was used for CAl9-9 (75% sensitivity, 92% specificity). Combination of CA19-9 assay with the upper limit set at 50uml-i and the peanut lectin assay improved the sensitivity to 85% with only a slight fall in specificity (85%). These results compare well with published results for ultrasound and CT scanning.

A Novel Serum Metabolomics-Based Diagnostic Approach to Pancreatic Cancer

“…Screening tests for the general population have to be accurate, safe, and convenient, as well as capable of high throughput. Many researchers have devoted considerable effort to discovering biomarkers of pancreatic cancer (8)(9)(10), and CA242 (11), M2-pyruvate kinase (12), PBF-4 (13), MIC-1 (14), PNA-binding glycoprotein (15), hTert (16), MMP-2 (17), and synuclein-g (18) have been reported as candidate biomarkers, but they were not clinically superior to CA19-9 or other clinical examinations.…”

Anti-T antibodies and peanut-agglutinin-binding glycoproteins in sera of patients with gastric cancer

“…Several methods to measure PNA-binding glycoproteins in sera of patients with gastrointestinal cancer have been reported (Ching and Rhodes 1989;Kawa et al 1992). Previous studies suggested that multiple dierent carbohydrate epitopes were present on PNA-binding mucin from sera of patients with pancreatic carcinoma (Ching and Rhodes 1990;Kawa et al 1991).…”

“…Several studies using immunohistochemical and biochemical methods have referred to the expression of PNA-binding glycoproteins in gastric cancer cells (Miyauchi et al 1982;Shimoda et al 1987) and tissues (David et al 1992). Increased levels of PNA-binding glycoproteins in sera of patients with gastrointestinal cancer have also been reported (Ching and Rhodes 1989;Kawa et al 1992).…”

Lectinomics I. Relevance of exogenous plant lectins in biomedical diagnostics

“…Additionally, it has been proposed that AFP level produced by pancreas carcinoma would be indicative of disease recurrence (Kawamoto et al 1992;Tanno et al 1997). A mucus glycoprotein, which expresses the oncofetal antigen Gal-1,3-GalNAc (T blood group antigen), can be detected by PNA lectin from serum of pancreatic cancer patients (ELLA assay) (Ching & Rhodes 1989). Another glycoprotein, PSa, can be used to detect changes in glycosylation during malignant transformation in serum samples.…”