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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

post-translational modifications, thymidine kinase 1, TK1, tumors

College

Life Sciences

Department

Microbiology and Molecular Biology

Abstract

Thymidine kinase 1 (TK1) is one diagnostic and prognostic marker which has shown promising potential in a variety of solid tumors and hematological malignancies. Unfortunately there have been challenges associated with developing a clinically useful immunoassay which have prevented TK1 from being fully utilized in the clinical setting at present. One of the major goals of this study was to produce a dependable, reproducible, immunoassay to detect TK1 in serum from cancer patients. There have been many attempts at detecting protein or genetic material in the serum or sputum of lung cancer patients but these all have failed due to the lack of sensitivity in detecting minute amounts of material in early stage patients. In this study we propose a novel early detection test which may overcome many of these limitations. We demonstrate that this early detection enzyme-linked immune sorbent assay (ELISA) for thymidine kinase 1 (TK1) is highly sensitive and specific for the diagnosis of stage 1, node-negative lung cancer as well as more advanced lung cancer patients.

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Microbiology Commons

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