Serum levels of carcinoembryonic antigen and a tumor-extracted carcinoembryonic antigen-related antigen in cancer patients.

Levels of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and a tumor-extracted CEA-related antigen (TEX) were determined in sera from patients with carcinomas of the breast, colon, lung, head and neck, and a number of miscellaneous categories. The purpose of this study was to compare the levels of each antigen at various stages of malignant disease. Competitive radioimmunoassays developed in our laboratory were shown to be sufficiently specific to detect either of these two antigens independent of each other. The results indicate that: (a) with our specific assays, CEA was not significantly elevated in smoker controls, but TEX was elevated in 29% of smoker controls; (b) TEX was equivalent to CEA as a tumor marker for colonic cancer. TEX was better than CEA as a marker for lung cancer and, based on limited data, there is a possibility that TEX is a significantly better tumor marker than is CEA in early lung cancer; (c) TEX was superior to CEA as a tumor marker for breast and head and neck cancers; (d) there is a strong indication that serial determinations of TEX can be used as effectively as CEA in the monitoring of disease progress. These preliminary results must be confirmed by increasing the number of cancer patients and including nonmalignant disease controls.