ONCOGENE-RELATED SERUM-PROTEINS AND CANCER RISK - A NESTED CASE-CONTROL STUDY

Proto-oncogenes are genes coding for factors involved in cellular grow th, reproduction, and differentiation, Cancer results through mutation s of proto-oncogenes or through other mechanisms involving the product s of proto-oncogenes, This study asks whether serum proteins immunolog ically related to the products of protooncogenes distinguish older men and women who manifest a new cancer during a 2-year follow-up. The au thors conducted a nested case-control study that involved 248 men and women selected from a larger group of older (age greater than or equal to 65 years) healthy volunteers in a randomized clinical trial of pre ventive clinical services, Study subjects included 37 with a fatal can cer, 59 non-fatal breast, prostate, colon, or lung cancer, 58 hospital ized with at least one discharge diagnosis that coded to benign neopla sia (International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision codes 210- 239), and 94 randomly selected controls, Using seven monoclonal antibo dies prepared against ras, erb-B, FES, myb, and SIS polypeptide sequen ces, immunoblots detected 17 proteins in serum collected from subjects before the clinical recognition of cancer. Five oncogene-related seru m proteins appeared to distinguish older persons who manifested fatal (but not non-fatal) cancer over a brief (2-year) follow-up, Older pers ons 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.