Publication Highlight
Frontiers in Immunology | January 2025
Ying Ye, Yi Huang and Jianbo Pan
Chongqing Medical University
Researchers Identify Down-regulated Autoantibodies as Promising Biomarkers for Stage IA Lung Cancer Detection
Tumor-associated antigen autoantibodies have emerged as a promising avenue for earlier detection of lung cancer, as it has been found that these autoantibodies are detectable months to years prior to diagnosis. Much research is focused on autoantibodies that are elevated in cancer patients, however there are also autoantibodies that have been shown to decrease, of which the function of most are unknown.
Researchers at Chongqing Medical University sought to investigate autoantibodies that decrease in lung cancer patients. The study used a large-scale screening approach with HuProt™ to analyze sera from 80 lung cancer patients and 20 healthy subjects. This work revealed 199 candidate biomarkers that were then validated using focused arrays for more targeted analysis. They identified 15 decreased autoantibodies that enabled 80% sensitivity and 87% specificity in detection of stage IA lung cancer. Of the down-regulated autoantibodies identified, 10 were found to return to normal levels 30 days after tumor resection, suggesting the potential of using these biomarkers as evidence for traces of residual tumor after surgery.
“Among the detected 15 autoantibodies, half of the corresponding genes and proteins have yet to be reported in lung cancer.” - Ye et. al.
