Circulating IgG antibody against FOXP3 may be a potential biomarker for lung cancer

Forkhead box P3 (FOXP3) has been found to be overexpressed by a range of cancer cells and correlated with prognosis of tumors. This finding raises the possibility that the development of anti-FOXP3 antibody test may be useful for clinical application. The present work was designed to test whether circulating autoantibody to FOXP3 was altered in lung cancer. 271 patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and 227 in control subjects matched in age, gender and smoking history were recruited. Circulating antiFOXP3 IgG antibody was tested using an inhouse enzymelinked immunosorbent assay.

Student’s t-test showed that the levels of IgG autoantibody to FOXP3 were significantly higher in patients with NSCLC than control subjects (t = 7.67, P < 0.0001). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.70 (95% CI 0.65 - 0.75, SE ± 0.024), in which patients at stage 2 had the highest AUC of 0.75 (95%CI 0.67 - 0.81, SE ± 0.037), with a sensitivity of 31.4% against a specificity of 90.3%. Analysis of quality control samples gave an inter-assay deviation of 13.3% among 45 plates tested. Conclusions: Circulating IgG autoantibody to FOXP3 may be a potential biomarker for lung cancer. The conclusions is circulating IgG autoantibody to FOXP3 may be a potential biomarker for lung cancer.

Article by Weili Wang,et al,from China.

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