Autoantibody recognition mechanisms of MUC1

The most cost-effective blood-based, noninvasive molecular early cancer biomarkers are based on p53 epitopes and MUC1 tandem repeats. Here we use dimensionally compressed bioinformatic fractal scaling analysis to compare the two distinct and comparable probes, which examine different sections of the autoantibody population, achieving combined sensitivities of order 50%. We explain the experimental observation that glycosylation does not enhance, and can depress, the sensitivity of MUC1 tandem repeat biomarkers. We propose a possible supplementary MUC1 epitope in the SEA region outside the tandem repeats.