Analysis of Transferrin in the Urine of Patients with Bladder Cancer Using Nanobodies

AbstractIt is known that the saturation ratio of transferrin  (Tf) with iron in human blood is an important clinical parameter. Specific antibodies can be used to analyze subtle changes in the relative abundance of different forms of transferrin potentially associated with a pathological process. Recently, the authors of this study were able to obtain and ch aracterize highly specific single-domain antibodies (nanobodies) that predominantly recognize the iron-saturated (holo-Tf) or iron-unsaturated (apo-Tf) form of transferrin. In this work, under conditions closer to physiological than in the previous experiments, we further demonstrated that these uni que nanobodies have extremely high differential binding specificity for different forms of Tf in different human biological fluids. Using these nanobodies, we were able to analyze for the first time relative abundance of the transferrin forms in urine samples from the patients with bladder cancer ( BC). We have shown that increase in the concentration of total Tf in the urine samples normalized for creatinine is associated with the degree of progress and growth of malignancy of BC. In the samples of healthy donors and in the early stages of BC (G1), Tf is detected in much smaller amounts (com pared to the later stages) and only with additional concentration of the studied samples. For most of the studied urine samples from the BC patients, it is expected (as previously shown in the case of Tf in the blood of terminal ovaria...
Source: Biochemistry (Moscow) - Category: Biochemistry Source Type: research