Circulating autoantibody to ABCC3 may be a potential biomarker for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

There is an urgent need to identify biomarkers for early diagnosis and prognosis of esophageal cancer. The present study was undertaken to test whether circulating autoantibodies to ATP-binding cassette C3 (ABCC3) transporter could serve as a biomarker for the malignant tumor. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay approach was developed in-house to test circulating autoantibodies to ABCC3 in 114 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and 226 healthy subjects well matched in age and smoking history. Mann-Whitney U test showed that the IgA antibody levels were significantly higher in patients with ESCC than control subjects (Z = -4.226, P < 0.001) while the IgG antibody levels were not significantly different between the two groups (Z = -1.072, P = 0.284). The sensitivity against > 95 % specificity was 13.2 % for the IgA assay with an inter-assay deviation of 13.0 and 7.9 % for the IgG assay with an inter-assay deviation of 9.4 %. This work suggests that circulating IgA autoantibody to ABCC3 may be a potential biomarker for ESCC, which could be used for early diagnosis and prognosis of the malignant tumor.