The presence and significance of the Thomsen-Friedenreich antigen in breast cancer

Abstract

Serum levels of antibodies against the Thomsen-Friedenreich (TF) antigen were determined for a group of patients with malignancies of the breast, as well as a control group of healthy persons and patients with no breast disease. Despite recent claims of anti-TF levels being severely depressed in patients with breast cancer, we were unable to show any significant differences between the two groups. Standardised anti-TF containing sera or solutions of the TF specific agglutinin from peanuts (PNA) were absorbed with membrane preparations from normal and cancerous breast tissue, but again no differences in absorption were noted. Histological examination, by contrast, showed both free and sialic acid-covered receptors to be present on both normal and malignant breast epithelium. Based on these findings it was concluded that determination of serum anti-TF is an unsatisfactory method of diagnosing breast cancer and that the TF antigen cannot be considered to be carcinoma associated.