Preliminary studies of serum glycoconjugates in patients with cancer using the enzyme-linked lectin assay.

After primary analyses on the serum glycoconjugates of lung cancer and normal individual using the enzyme-linked lectin assay (ELLA) with 12 kinds of lectins, PHA and LCA were selected for further study in the sera of 8 kinds of cancers, 4 kinds of non-malignant diseases and a kind of postoperative cancer. It was found that the test values of 7 kinds of cancers with PHA or LCA were significantly higher than those of the normal (P less than 0.01); the values of 4 kinds of non-malignant diseases with PHA were not higher (P greater than 0.05); the values of the postoperative cancer with PHA were obviously lower than those of the preoperative (P less than 0.02). The results showed that the serum glycoconjugates which can bind to PHA seemed related to the cancerous existence in human bodies. The significance of the findings was discussed.