title: Oncogene-related serum proteins and cancer risk: a nested case-control study.
abstract: Proto-oncogenes are genes coding for factors involved in cellular growth, reproduction, and differentiation. Cancer results through mutations of proto-oncogenes or through other mechanisms involving the products of proto-oncogenes. This study asks whether serum proteins immunologically related to the products of proto-oncogenes distinguish older men and women who manifest a new cancer during a 2-year follow-up. The authors conducted a nested case-control study that involved 248 men and women selected from a larger group of older (age > or = 65 years) healthy volunteers in a randomized clinical trial of preventive clinical services. Study subjects included 37 with a fatal cancer, 59 non-fatal breast, prostate, colon, or lung cancer, 58 hospitalized with at least one discharge diagnosis that coded to benign neoplasia (International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision codes 210-239), and 94 randomly selected controls. Using seven monoclonal antibodies prepared against ras, erb-B, FES, myb, and SIS polypeptide sequences, immunoblots detected 17 proteins in serum collected from subjects before the clinical recognition of cancer. Five oncogene-related serum proteins appeared to distinguish older persons who manifested fatal (but not non-fatal) cancer over a brief (2-year) follow-up. Older persons hospitalized with benign neoplasia also had higher levels of these serum proteins. Relative to the 94 control subjects, a 52,000 dalton SIS-related protein (odd ratio (OR) = 5.9, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.4-24.9) and a 35,000 dalton k-ras-related protein (OR = 11.3, 95% CI 1.2-104) were particularly common in serum from the 37 subjects who manifested a fatal cancer.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Weissfeld
authors.forename: R D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Larsen
authors.forename: H L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Niman
authors.forename: L H
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Kuller
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000097:blood* / Q000401:mortality; D016017:Odds Ratio; D015513:Oncogene Proteins / Q000097:blood*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric
chemical_list: D015513:Oncogene Proteins