IMR Press / CEOG / Volume 20 / Issue 4 / pii/1993043

Clinical and Experimental Obstetrics & Gynecology (CEOG) is published by IMR Press from Volume 47 Issue 1 (2020). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with S.O.G.

Original Research

Serum and cytosolic levels of CA 549 in breast cancer patients

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1 RIA Laboratory, Oncology Institute of Bari, Bari (Italy)
2 Division of Gynaecological Oncology, Oncology Institute of Bari, Bari (Italy)
3 Division of Medical Oncology, Oncology Institute of Bari, Bari (Italy)
Clin. Exp. Obstet. Gynecol. 1993, 20(4), 264–267;
Published: 10 December 1993
Abstract

CA 549 is a new mucinous circulating tumor marker recognized by two monoclonal antibodies (BC4E549 and BC4N154) recently proposed for breast cancer. In this report we compared the levels of CA 549 and CA 15.3, the best known biomarker for breast cancer nowadays, in 68 sieric and 59 cytosolic samples. Serum samples came from 59 breast patients (24 with primary disease = M-, 18 with systemic disease = M+, 17 with no evidence of disease after surgery = NED) and 9 women with benign breast disease = BBD. The cytosols were prepared from primary breast carcinomas according to the method used for hormonal receptors. At first we evaluated the analytical performance of the immunoradiometric assay for CA 549 (Hybri-BREScan, Hybritech) and its applicability to the cytosolic determination. Using a cut-off value of 12 U/mL for CA 549 and 28 U/mL for CA 15.3 serum levels, we obtained the following percentages of positivities: M- = 21%; M+ = 83%; NED = 0%; BBD = 22% for CA 549 and M- = 33%; M+ = 89%; NED = 18%; BBD = 22% for CA 15.3. CA 549 gave information concordant with CA 15.3 in a high percentage of cases both in sera and in cytosols, but the clinical relevance of cytosolic determination remains to be investigated. Since serum CA 549 showed an adequate sensitivity in M+ patients only, it may be proposed in the follow-up to confirm CA 15.3 abnormal values or as an alternative to it.

Keywords
Tumor markers
Breast cancer
Cytosol
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