Published: 14 January 2011
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cancer Molecules in Ovarian Cancer)
Abstract:
Most
scientific efforts towards early detection of ovarian cancer are
commonly focused on the discovery of tumour-associated antigens (TAA).
Autologous antibodies against TAA, however, may serve as more sensitive
diagnostic markers. They circulate in the blood before TAA and are
usually more abundant than the TAAs themselves as a result of
amplification through the humoral immune response. Accumulating evidence
also suggests that a humoral response already exists during malignant
transformation when aberrant gene expression is translated into
premalignant cellular changes. This article reviews the current
knowledge about autoantibodies against TAA in ovarian cancer and
presents current immunoproteomic approaches for their detection.
