Evaluation of Diagnostic Value in Using a Panel of Multiple Tumor-Associated Antigens for Immunodiagnosis of Cancer

To determine whether a panel of multiple tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) would enhance antibody detection, the diagnostic value of autoantibodies to a panel of multiple TAAs in cancer has been evaluated. The TAAs used in this study was composed of eight TAAs including Imp1, p62, Koc, p53, C-myc, Cyclin B1, Survivin, and p16 full-length recombinant proteins. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and immunoblotting were used to detect antibodies in 304 cancer sera and also 58 sera from normal individuals. The antibody frequency to any individual TAA in cancer was variable but rarely exceeded 20%. With the successive addition of TAAs to a final combination of total of eight antigens, there was a stepwise increase of positive antibody reactions reaching a sensitivity of 63.5% and a specificity of 86.2% in the combined cancer group. In different types of cancer, the ranges of positive and negative likelihood ratio were 4.07–4.76 and 0.39–0.51, respectively, and the ranges of positive and negative predictive values were 74.2–88.7% and 58.8–75.8%, respectively. Agreement rate and Kappa value were 67.1% and 0.51, respectively. These results further support our previous hypothesis that detection of anti-TAAs autoantibodies for diagnosis of certain type of cancer can be enhanced by using a miniarray of several TAAs.