Improving Seroreactivity-Based Detection of Glioma

Seroreactivity profiling emerges as valuable technique for minimal invasive cancer detection. Recently, we provided first evidence for the applicability of serum profiling of glioma using a limited number of immunogenic antigens. Here, we screened 57 glioma and 60 healthy sera for autoantibodies against 1827 Escherichia coli expressed clones, including 509 in-frame peptide sequences. By a linear support vector machine approach, we calculated mean specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy of 100 repetitive classifications. We were able to differentiate glioma sera from sera of the healthy controls with a specificity of 90.28%, a sensitivity of 87.31% and an accuracy of 88.84%. We were also able to differentiate World Health Organization grade IV glioma sera from healthy sera with a specificity of 98.45%, a sensitivity of 80.93%, and an accuracy of 92.88%. To rank the antigens according to their information content, we computed the area under the receiver operator characteristic curve value for each clone. Altogether, we found 46 immunogenic clones including 16 in-frame clones that were informative for the classification of glioma sera versus healthy sera. For the separation of glioblastoma versus healthy sera, we found 91 informative clones including 26 in-frame clones. The best-suited in-frame clone for the classification glioma sera versus healthy sera corresponded to the vimentin gene (VIM) that was previously associated with glioma. In the future, autoantibody signatures in glioma not only may prove useful for diagnosis but also offer the prospect for a personalized immune-based therapy.