Figure 1.
A novel indirect ELISA detects Ma2 autoantibodies in serum from SI-NET patients.
Healthy controls (HC), untreated SI-NET patients with primary tumor (P), lymph node metastasis (LNM) and liver metastasis (LM) were evaluated for the presence of Ma2 autoantibodies. Horizontal bars in bold indicate the medians in each group. Horizontal lines indicate the cutoff at 1.96 SD above the mean of anti-Ma2 concentration of HC. Significant differences, which are shown by p values, were detected between HC and each stage of malignancy (A) and between HC and all the SI-NET patients (B). ROC analyses and AUCs results are shown in C, D, E and F. The highlighted points in each graph indicate the cutoff.
Table 1.
Results of indirect ELISA assay for Ma2 autoantibodies.
Figure 2.
Detection of Ma2 autoantibodies in serum of healthy controls and primary SI-NET patients.
2A) GST-tagged fusion PNMA2 recombinant protein was subjected to SDS-PAGE followed by Western blotting analysis. A mouse anti-GST antibody (lane I) and a goat anti-PNMA2 antibody (lane II) verified the GST-tagged PNMA2 recombinant protein. Lanes III-IV, sera from 2 healthy donors; Lanes V-VI sera from 2 primary SI-NET patients with low anti-Ma2 titer; Lanes VII-VIII, sera from 2 primary SI-NET patients with high anti-Ma2 titer. Lanes III to VIII show differences in the amount of Ma2 autoantibodies. The lower panel shows the semiquantitative measurement of band densities of the blot. 2B) autoradiographic image of sequentially immunoprecipitated 35S-Met-Ma2, positive control (lane 1); negative control (lane 2); sera from 3 healthy donors with low anti-Ma2 titer (lanes 3–5); sera from 3 primary SI-NET patients with high anti-Ma2 titer (lanes 6–8). The lower panel shows the semiquantitative measurement of pixel densities of the autoradiographic image.
Figure 3.
PFS and RFS of primary SI-NET patients after surgery with curative intent depend on Ma2 autoantibody titer.
Patients were divided in two groups based on the Ma2 autoantibody titer either below or above the cutoff at 1900 AU as described in Material and Methods. Kaplan-Meier survival curve analyses were plotted for PFS (A) and RFS (B). The p-values of the differences between the two groups were obtained by using the log-rank test for each evaluation.
Table 2.
Ma2 autoantibody levels and associated clinical characteristics of primary SI-NET patients analyzed after surgery with a curative intent.
Figure 4.
A novel indirect ELISA detects Ma2 autoantibodies in lung carcinoid patients.
Healthy controls (HC, n = 50), untreated TLC (n = 52) and ALC patients (n = 14) were evaluated for the presence of Ma2 autoantibodies. Horizontal bars in bold indicate the medians in each group. Horizontal lines indicate the cutoff at 1900 AU (1.96 SD above control mean). 4A) p-values between healthy controls and the two groups of patients, TLC and ALC show significant differences. 4B) p-values between healthy controls and all lung carcinoids (TLC + ALC) show significant differences. ROC curve analyses and AUCs are shown in Figure 4C, 4D and 4E. The highlighted points in each graph indicate the cutoff.