Tissue Polypeptide Antigen and Specific TPA

Abstract

Tissue polypeptide antigen (TPA) was originally described by Björklund and Björklund (1957). It was isolated from the insoluble residues of pooled tumors. Horse antiserum against the protein recognized both soluble form of TPA in human sera and body fluids, and an insoluble form in human tissues. Originally TPA was thought to be a tumor marker and, more recently, a proliferation marker (Björklund, 1980). TPA levels are elevated in the sera of patients with carcinomas, including breast cancer and tumor of the gastrointestinal, urogenital, and respiratory tract (Menendez-Botet et al., 1978; Björklund, 1980; Lüthgens and Schlegel, 1980, 1983, 1985; Schlegel et al., 1981; Skryten et al., 1981; Oehr et al., 1981, 1982b, 1984a; Inoue et al., 1985; Panucci et al., 1985, 1986; Salvati et al., 1985; Mross et al., 1985; Liu et al., 1989). The correlation between serological TPA levels and tumor progression has been studied for several years (Björklund, 1980; Lüthgens and Schlegel, 1980, 1985; Skryten et al., 1981; Inoue et al., 1985; Salvati et al., 1985). Generally there is an inverse relationship between TPA level and a favorable prognosis (Björklund, 1980; Lüthgens and Schlegel, 1980, 1985; Schlegel et al., 1981; Oehr et al., 1984a; Salvati et al., 1985; Bönnen et al., 1989). Serum and urinary TPA determinations show the highest sensitivity for early tumor detection in urinary bladder cancer. This is the case for transitional bladder cancer (Adolphs and Oehr, 1984, Oehr et al., 1984a; Costello et al., 1985; Carbin et al., 1989) as well as squamous cell cancer (El-Ahmady et al., 1989). There are isolated reports of elevated TPA levels in serum of patients with tumors other than carcinomas, e.g., in lymphoma (Inoue et al., 1985).