Quantitative mass spectrometric analysis of hepatocellular carcinoma biomarker alpha-fetoprotein

Chen-Chun Chen; Han-Wen Huang; Bo-Rui Chen; Chi-Huey Wong

doi:10.1039/d3cb00069a

Quantitative mass spectrometric analysis of hepatocellular carcinoma biomarker alpha-fetoprotein

RSC Chem Biol. 2023 Oct 9;4(12):1073-1081. doi: 10.1039/d3cb00069a. eCollection 2023 Nov 29.

Authors

Chen-Chun Chen^{1

2}, Han-Wen Huang², Bo-Rui Chen², Chi-Huey Wong^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, National Taiwan University Taipei Taiwan.
² Genomic Research Center, Academia Sinica Taipei Taiwan.
³ Department of Chemistry, The Scripps Research Institute 10550 N. Torrey Pines Rd. La Jolla CA 92037 USA wong@scripps.edu.

Abstract

Serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) has been used as a marker for the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and its core fucosylation is associated with the early stage of HCC. However, current methods for the detection of AFP with core fucose are not highly accurate for early diagnosis. In this study, we established an enzyme-assisted mass spectrometric method for the quantitative analysis of AFP/core fucose with high specificity and sensitivity. We employed endoglycosidase treatment of AFP to improve the biomarker analysis. The accuracy and precision are within the US FDA-suggested value, and a good linearity (r² = 0.9930) and a detection limit of 15.6 ng mL^-1 can be achieved.