Autoantibody Signature Differentiates Wilms Tumor Patients from Neuroblastoma Patients

Several studies report autoantibody signatures in cancer. The majority of these studies analyzed adult tumors and compared the seroreactivity pattern of tumor patients with the pattern in healthy controls. Here, we compared the autoimmune response in patients with neuroblastoma and patients with Wilms tumor representing two different childhood tumors. We were able to differentiate untreated neuroblastoma patients from untreated Wilms tumor patients with an accuracy of 86.8%, a sensitivity of 87.0% and a specificity of 86.7%. The separation of treated neuroblastoma patients from treated Wilms tumor patients' yielded comparable results with an accuracy of 83.8%. We furthermore identified the antigens that contribute most to the differentiation between both tumor types. The analysis of these antigens revealed that neuroblastoma was considerably more immunogenic than Wilms tumor. The reported antigens have not been found to be relevant for comparative analyses between other tumors and controls. In summary, neuroblastoma appears as a highly immunogenic tumor as demonstrated by the extended number of antigens that separate this tumor from Wilms tumor.

多项研究均报道了癌症中的自身抗体（autoantibody）特征。此类研究大多聚焦成人肿瘤，将肿瘤患者的血清反应谱与健康对照人群的对应模式进行对比。本研究针对两种不同的儿童肿瘤——神经母细胞瘤（neuroblastoma）与肾母细胞瘤（Wilms tumor）患者的自身免疫应答展开对比分析。我们成功将未经治疗的神经母细胞瘤患者与未经治疗的肾母细胞瘤患者区分开来，区分准确率达86.8%、灵敏度为87.0%、特异性为86.7%。针对接受治疗的两类患者的区分也获得了相近结果，准确率为83.8%。此外，我们还鉴定出了对区分这两种肿瘤类型贡献最大的抗原。对这些抗原的分析显示，神经母细胞瘤的免疫原性显著高于肾母细胞瘤。现有研究尚未发现这些抗原可用于其他肿瘤与健康对照的对比分析。综上，本研究通过可区分两类肿瘤的大量抗原证实，神经母细胞瘤是一种免疫原性极强的肿瘤。