Nanoparticle-aided glycovariant assays to bridge biomarker performance and ctDNA results

Publication date: Available online 29 November 2019Source: Molecular Aspects of MedicineAuthor(s): Kamlesh Gidwani, Henna Kekki, Joonas Terävä, Tero Soukka, Karin Sundfeldt, Kim PetterssonAbstractNumerous immunoassay based cancer biomarkers established in the 1970 and 1980′ies are widely used in clinical routine. Initial expectations of biomarkers such as CEA, CA125, CA19-9, AFP to provide decisive help in the diagnosis of early stage, pre-symptomatic cancers have not been realized. Thus, they are primarily used for monitoring disease progression and occasionally being useful as prognostic indicators. This limitation is due to the marker also being measurable in healthy individuals and frequently at elevated concentrations in common benign conditions. Most conventional tumor markers are glycosylated and interestingly specific alterations of the glycostructure part can often be seen early in the cancerous process. Conventional double monoclonal immunoassays are however blind to such changes as they are based on peptide epitope recognition. Wide selections of carbohydrate recognizing macromolecules, lectins, but also glycan structure recognizing antibodies are potentially useful for detecting such changes. Despite numerous attempts generating proof-of-principle evidence for this, such assays have generally not been successfully introduced into clinical routine. The affinity constants of lectin and glycan specific antibodies for their corresponding carbohydrate structures ma...
Source: Molecular Aspects of Medicine - Category: Molecular Biology Source Type: research