A 33.5-kDa heat- and protease-resistant NADH oxidase inhibited by capsaicin from sera of cancer patients.

Sera from patients with a variety of cancers, including solid carcinomas, leukemias, and lymphomas, contain a ca. 33.5-kDa protein absent from sera of healthy volunteers or patients not diagnosed as having cancer. The protein exhibits an NADH oxidase activity inhibited by 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-noneamide (capsaicin). The activity and the protein are resistant to digestion by proteases (trypsin, chymotrypsin, proteinase K, subtilisin) and to heat. Following protease digestion to reduce the content of major serum proteins, the 33.5-kDa protein could be detected on Western blots of SDS-PAGE transferred to nitrocellulose membranes using polyclonal antisera to a corresponding partially purified 33.5-kDa protein shed into culture media conditioned by growth of HeLa cells. No corresponding protein was seen with control sera. The findings confirm the capsaicin-inhibited NADH oxidase activity of cancer sera as a circulating marker potentially specific to sera of cancer patients and identify a ca. 33.5-kDa protein resistant to proteases and heat as the source of the circulating capsaicin-inhibited NADH oxidase activity.