Isolation and partial characterization of macromolecular urinary aggregates containing carcinoembryonic antigen-like activity.

Carcinoembryonic antigen-like substances in the urine of patients with bladder carcinoma and of healthy male subjects occur in a wide range of average molecular sizes. Some of these substances are glycoproteins giving reactions of antigenic identity with carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) derived from colorectal carcinoma and occur in aggregation with proteins showing antigen specificities of albumin, haptoglobin and the heavy chains of immunoglobulins G, A and M. Recoveries of CEA-like activities, following Sepharose 4B chromatography of urinary materials of molecular size > 3 × 10(4), varied from 40 to 1530%. Treatment with 1 mol/1 HClO(4) caused an apparent solubilization of 85% of the CEA-like activity of such materials from the urine of a patient with bladder carcinoma and raised the specific CEA-like activity of the solubilized product to 379% of that of the untreated materials.