Pentraxin-3 is a novel biomarker of lung carcinoma

Abstract

Purpose: Our objective was to validate the performance of three new candidate lung cancer biomarkers, pentraxin-3 (PTX3), human kallikrein 11 (KLK11), and progranulin.

Experimental design: We analyzed by commercial ELISA, and with a blinded protocol, 422 samples from 203 patients with lung carcinoma, 180 individuals with high risk for lung cancer (heavy smokers), and 43 individuals with cancers other than lung. All samples were obtained from the Early Detection Research Network (Reference set A).

Results: We found that progranulin and KLK11 were not informative lung cancer biomarkers, with areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC; ROC), close to 0.50. However, PTX3 was an informative lung cancer biomarker, with considerable ability to separate lung cancer patients from high-risk controls. At 90% and 80% specificity, the sensitivities versus the high-risk control group were 37% and 48%, respectively. The discriminatory ability of PTX3 was about the same with all major subtypes and histotypes of lung cancer. The AUC of the ROC curves increased according to the disease stage, from 0.64 (stage I) to 0.72 (stage IV).

Conclusion: PTX3, but not KLK11 or progranulin, is a new serum biomarker for lung carcinoma. Its diagnostic sensitivity and specificity is similar to other clinically used lung cancer biomarkers. More studies are needed to establish if PTX3 has clinical utility for lung cancer diagnosis and management.