Use of autoantibodies against tumor-associated antigens as serum biomarkers for primary screening of cervical cancer

// Yingji Jin 1 , Seung Cheol Kim 2 , Hyoung Jin Kim 1 , Woong Ju 2 , Yun Hwan Kim 2 and Hong-Jin Kim 1 1 Laboratory of Virology, College of Pharmacy, Chung-Ang University, Dongjak-Gu, Seoul 06974, South Korea 2 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Ewha Womans University College of Medicine, Yangcheon-Gu, Seoul 03760, South Korea Correspondence to: Hong-Jin Kim, email: hongjink@cau.ac.kr Keywords: cervical cancer; autoantibody; tumor associated antigen; enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; cervical intraepithelial neoplasia Received: June 14, 2017     Accepted: October 02, 2017     Published: November 01, 2017 ABSTRACT Serum autoantibodies against tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) have received much attention as potential biomarkers for early detection of cancers, since they can be detected in the early stages of cancers. Autoantibodies against Cancer Antigen 15-3 (CA15-3), carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), Cancer Antigen 19-9 (CA19-9), c-Myc, p53, heat shock protein (Hsp)27 and Hsp70 have been suggested as potential markers for detecting several types of cancer. In the present study, the seven types of antibody listed above were evaluated for detecting cervical lesions. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) were used to measure IgG levels of the autoantibodies in women with normal cytology, cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) I, CIN II, CIN III and cervical cancer. The increases of anti-CA15-3 and anti-CEA IgG in cervical cancer were more pronounced than the increases of the other markers, and the level of anti-CA19-9 IgG in CIN III stage was higher than in normal CIN I, CIN II or cervical cancer. A combination of ELISAs detecting anti-CA15-3, anti-CEA and anti-CA19-9 IgGs was found to reliably discriminate CINs from normal and to strongly differentiate cancer from normal (90.3% of sensitivity and 82.1% of specificity). We suggest that the combination of three ELISA may be useful for detecting cervical lesions.