Antigenic reactivities of purified preparations of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and related normal antigens using four different radioimmunoassay systems for CEA.

Antigenic reactivities of 4 purified carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) preparations including the WHO standard CEA and 4 CEA-related antigens--nonspecific cross-reacting antigen (NCA) from normal lungs, nonspecific cross-reacting antigen-2 (NCA-2) from meconium, normal fecal antigen-1 (NFA-1) and normal fecal antigen-2 (NFA-2) from normal adult feces--were investigated using 4 different radioimmunoassay (RIA) systems (Hoffman-La Roche, CEA-IRE-SORIN, Dainabot and our system). In general, all CEA preparations including the respective standard CEAs gave similar reactions with these assay systems. Differences in reaction intensity were, however, observed among the CEA preparations, and the order of reaction intensity among the preparations varied due to assay systems, e.g., a given CEA preparation which reacted most strongly with an assay system reacted very weakly with another assay system, and vice versa. Both NCA-2 and NFA-2, which possessed physiochemical properties very similar to those of CEA, revealed reactivities indistinguishable from those of the CEA preparations in all systems. NCA, which showed a partial cross-reactivity with CEA in the double immunodiffusion test, revealed a remarkably weak reactivity in all systems. NFA-1, however, which was also partially cross-reactive with CEA but antigenically unrelated to NCA, showed a fairly strong reactivity in all systems, but its dose-dependent slope was apparently different from that of the other antigen preparations.