Development of a competitive radioimmunoassay for glypican-3 and the clinical application in diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma

ObjectiveGlypican-3 (GPC3) is a promising specific tumor maker for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The aim of this study is to establish a method to detect serum GPC3 and evaluate the clinical application on clinical diagnosis.Design and methodsA competitive radioimmunoassay for detecting serum GPC3 was developed. Clinical sera were detected by the proposed method and AFP, CA19-9 chemiluminescence immunoassay kit.ResultsThe proposed method with high sensitivity, specificity and precision had no or little detectable cross-reactivity with relating tumor markers in the dynamic range from 15 to 500 ng/mL, and the detection limit was 0.5 ng/mL. The level of GPC3 in HCC was obviously higher than that in normal liver or other liver diseases. Additionally, our method showed high shows higher sensitivity and specificity for GPC3 than AFP and combined AFP/CA19-9.ConclusionsThis paper provided an applicable competitive radioimmunoassay for GPC3 with high sensitivity, specificity and precision. In addition, using GPC3 for HCC diagnosis was more valuable than AFP.