Person:

Sluss, Patrick M.

Establishing a cancer screening biomarker’s intended performance requires “phase III” specimens obtained in asymptomatic individuals before clinical diagnosis rather than “phase II” specimens obtained from symptomatic individuals at diagnosis. We used specimens from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) cancer screening trial to evaluate ovarian cancer biomarkers previously assessed in phase II sets.

Phase II specimens from 180 ovarian cancer cases and 660 benign disease or general population controls were assembled from four Early Detection Research Network (EDRN) or Ovarian Cancer Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) sites and used to rank 49 biomarkers. Thirty-five markers, including 6 additional markers from a fifth site, were then evaluated in PLCO proximate specimens from 118 women with ovarian cancer and 474 matched controls.

Top markers in phase II specimens included CA125, HE4, transthyretin, CA15.3, and CA72.4 with sensitivity at 95% specificity ranging from 0.73 to 0.40. Except for transthyretin, these markers had similar or better sensitivity when moving to phase III specimens that had been drawn within six months of the clinical diagnosis. Performance of all markers declined in phase III specimens more remote than 6 months from diagnosis.

Despite many promising new markers for ovarian cancer, CA125 remains the single-best biomarker in the phase II and phase III specimens tested in this study.

A panel of biomarkers may improve predictive performance over individual markers. Although many biomarker panels have been described for ovarian cancer, few studies used pre-diagnostic samples to assess the potential of the panels for early detection. We conducted a multi-site systematic evaluation of biomarker panels using pre-diagnostic serum samples from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer (PLCO) screening trial.

Using a nested case-control design, levels of 28 biomarkers were measured laboratory-blinded in 118 serum samples obtained before cancer diagnosis and 951 serum samples from matched controls. Five predictive models, each containing 6–8 biomarkers, were evaluated according to a pre-determined analysis plan. Three sequential analyses were conducted: blinded validation of previously established models (Step 1); simultaneous split-sample discovery and validation of models (Step 2); and exploratory discovery of new models (Step 3). Sensitivity, specificity, sensitivity at 98% specificity, and AUC were computed for the models and CA125 alone among 67 cases diagnosed within one year of blood draw and 476 matched controls. In Step 1, one model showed comparable performance to CA125, with sensitivity, specificity and AUC at 69.2%, 96.6% and 0.892, respectively. Remaining models had poorer performance than CA125 alone. In Step 2, we observed a similar pattern. In Step 3, a model derived from all 28 markers failed to show improvement over CA125.

Thus, biomarker panels discovered in diagnostic samples may not validate in pre-diagnostic samples; utilizing pre-diagnostic samples for discovery may be helpful in developing validated early detection panels.