Significance of adenocarcinoma-associated antigen YH206 levels in the pancreatic juice.

We measured the pancreatic juice levels of antigen YH206, which is a new tumor marker of adenocarcinomas detected by monoclonal antibody YH206 (Hinoda et al., Int. J Cancer 24(5):653-658, 1988). Sandwich enzyme immunoassay revealed that samples from patients with pancreas cancer (n = 21) showed significantly higher values (P less than 0.01) than those of healthy controls (n = 15). Eight out of 21 (38.1%) samples from patients with pancreas cancer showed more than 100 U/ml, whereas only one out of 20 (5.0%) from patients with chronic pancreatitis exhibited more than 100 U/ml of antigen YH206. Simultaneous measurement of antigen YH206 and CA19-9 demonstrated that although a higher incidence of positivity in the case of pancreas cancer was obtained for both antigens, antigen YH206 showed much lower incidence of positivity (14%) than CA19-9 (57%) in patients with chronic pancreatitis. Therefore, the measurement of antigen YH206 in the pancreatic juice could be of use for the diagnosis of pancreas cancer.