Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• HIPPO, Yoshitaka
• WATANABE, Kiyotaka
• NEZU, Jun-Ichi
• TSUNODA, Hiroyuki
• YOSHINO, Takeshi
• OHIZUMI, Iwao
• TSUCHIYA, Masayuki
• OHNISHI, Shin
• MAKUUCHI, Masatoshi
• HAMAKUBO, Takao
• KODAMA, Tatsuhiko
• ABURATANI, Hiroyuki
• WATANABE, Akira
• MIDORIKAWA, Yutaka
• YAMAMOTO, Shogo
• IHARA, Sigeo
• TOKITA, Susumu
• IWANARI, Hiroko
• ITO, Yukio
• NAKANO, Kiyotaka

Titel

Identification of soluble NH2-terminal fragment of glypican-3 as a serological marker for early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma

Ist Teil von

• Cancer research (Chicago, Ill.), 2004-04, Vol.64 (7), p.2418-2423

Ort / Verlag

Philadelphia, PA: American Association for Cancer Research

Erscheinungsjahr

2004

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• For detection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in patients with liver cirrhosis, serum alpha-fetoprotein has been widely used, but its sensitivity has not been satisfactory, especially in small, well-differentiated HCC, and complementary serum marker has been clinically required. Glypican-3 (GPC3), a heparan sulfate proteoglycan anchored to the plasma membrane, is a good candidate marker of HCC because it is an oncofetal protein overexpressed in HCC at both the mRNA and protein levels. In this study, we demonstrated that its NH(2)-terminal portion [soluble GPC3 (sGPC3)] is cleaved between Arg(358) and Ser(359) of GPC3 and that sGPC3 can be specifically detected in the sera of patients with HCC. Serum levels of sGPC3 were 4.84 +/- 8.91 ng/ml in HCC, significantly higher than the levels seen in liver cirrhosis (1.09 +/- 0.74 ng/ml; P < 0.01) and healthy controls (0.65 +/- 0.32 ng/ml; P < 0.001). In well- or moderately-differentiated HCC, sGPC3 was superior to alpha-fetoprotein in sensitivity, and a combination measurement of both markers improved overall sensitivity from 50% to 72%. These results indicate that sGPC3 is a novel serological marker essential for the early detection of HCC.