Fucosylated C4b-binding protein α-chain, a novel serum biomarker that predicts lymph node metastasis in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

C4b-binding protein α-chain (C4BPA) was previously identified as a novel serum biomarker for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). To apply this biomarker for clinical diagnosis, a lectin ELISA was established to measure serum fucosylated (Fuc)-C4BPA levels in 45 patients with PDAC, 20 patients with chronic pancreatitis (CP) and 50 healthy volunteers (HVs) in one training and three validation sets. The lecithin ELISA developed in the current study exhibited satisfactory within-run (2.6-6.7%) and between-day (1.8-3.6%) coefficient of variations. Serum Fuc-C4BPA levels in patients with PDAC (0.54±0.27 AU/ml) was significantly higher than that in HVs (0.21±0.06 AU/ml; P<0.0001) and patients with CP (0.25±0.03 AU/ml; P<0.0001). Additionally, serum Fuc-C4BPA levels in preoperative patients were significantly decreased compared with postoperative patient sera (P<0.0003). The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses revealed that the area under the curve (AUC) of Fuc-C4BPA (0.985) was higher than that of carbohydrate antigen (CA)19-9 (0.843), carcinoembryonic antigen (0.548) and total C4BPA (0.875) (P<0.001). To analyze the clinical significance of Fuc-C4BPA, the ability of Fuc-C4BPA to predict lymph node metastasis was compared with that of CA19-9. The AUC of serum Fuc-C4BPA levels (0.703) was significantly higher than that of serum CA19-9 levels (0.500) in patients with PDAC (P<0.001). The current study established a novel lectin ELISA for measuring serum Fuc-C4BPA levels. Thus, Fuc-C4BPA has potential clinical applications owing to its high diagnostic value in PDAC.