Determination of the Relationship Between Artemin Expression Levels in Blood and Breast Cancer
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Abstract
No matter what forms or subtypes of BC, to acquire or develop a simple novel approach that can detect early stage BC with accuracy is the essence of this research. Currently, the lack of an early, appropriate diagnostic approach causes delay in the diagnosis of cancer of the breast. The opportunity for early diagnosis with an appropriate diagnostic test could increase patient survival. We used quantitative sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to discern whether we can make use of Artemin (ARTN) measurement to detect early breast cancer (BC).
ELISA technique was utilized to analyse ARTN protein from a complex mixture of proteins present in the blood samples. A total of 172 subjects were recruited from a previous pilot study in 2011 by Dr Liu at Liggins Institute, UoA. Samples include healthy volunteers (cohort A), early BC (cohort B), and advanced BC (cohort C) individuals. Their serum samples were taken, and analysed, and comparison made between the heathy control and the two patient cohorts. A commercially available human ARTN ELISA kit was used for the detection. Statistical tools were applied to perform quantitative data analysis.
The result show that ARTN is secreted in both healthy individuals and BC patients. With p value of 0.001 when the control group is compared with the early BC individuals using t-test analysis; however, we cannot conclude at this stage that ARTN is effective in early BC diagnosis. In the sense that sample numbers analysed were small, further investigation that will include a large population of early diagnosed patients is required to establish ARTN usefulness.
In conclusion, serum ARTN measurement can be a target biomarker for early clinical diagnosis of BC.