Correlation Between Auto-antibodies to Survivin and MUC1 Variable Number Tandem Repeats in Colorectal Cancer

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency and correlation between auto-antibodies tosurvivin and MUC1 variable number tandem repeats (VNTR) in colorectal cancer (CRC), which can providevaluable information for the design of immunotherapeutic vaccines for this disease.
Methods: Enzyme-linkedimmunosorbent assays (ELISA) were used to examine the level of auto-antibodies against survivin and MUC1VNTR in the serum of 135 CRC patients and 95 healthy volunteers.
Results: Using mean absorbance + 2 standarddeviations (SD) of the healthy samples as a cut-off value, the positive rates of survivin and MUC1 VNTR autoantibodiesin CRC were 31.1% and 18.5%, respectively. Altogether, the survivin and MUC1 VNTR positivesamples accounted for 36.3% of the CRC patients, and 7.4% were positive for both.
Conclusion: A significantpositive correlation was found between levels of specific antibodies against survivin and MUC1 VNTR in theserum of CRC patients (r = 0.3652, P < 0.0001), suggesting that vaccines against both targets would elicit immuneresponses more effectively.