Adenosine deaminase complexing protein in cancer studies.

ADCP is a dimeric glycoprotein of about 200KD, for which the physiological role is still obscure. This protein occurs mainly in a membrane bound form in various human tissues. In this paper we review the current literature on ADCP in cancer studies. Soluble ADCP was described to be consistently decreased or absent in cancers of lung, liver, kidney and colon. These findings could not be confirmed by immunohistochemical and quantitative biochemical studies in a series of colorectal-, prostatic-, and renal carcinomas. Only in a third of these tumors a decrease could be demonstrated, whereas in the other cases unaltered or even increased amounts were observed. However, in virally transformed human fibroblasts a consistent decrease or complete absence of ADCP was seen, while primary fibroblasts were found to contain high amounts of this protein. Recently, the use of ADCP as a differentiation marker in colonic cancer has been advocated. Furthermore the presence of ADCP in the serum of renal adenocarcinoma patients was found to be indicative of a better chance of five year survival. These studies suggest that ADCP may be a differentiation marker useful for immunohistochemical characterization of colonic and renal carcinomas as well as a serum marker useful for follow-up studies of these types of cancer, analogous to CEA. Finally, ADCP has been found to be selectively expressed by certain T-cell subsets and henceforth may be useful in the studies on leukemias.