The Implication of Autoantibodies in Early Diagnosis and Monitoring of Plasmonic Photothermal Therapy in the Treatment of Feline Mammary Carcinoma

Abstract

\n BackgroundLast year’s plasmonic photothermal therapy (PPTT) achieved great success in the treatment of feline mammary carcinoma and there is a demand for developing an easy, cheap, rapid, sensitive, and specific tool for early diagnosis and monitoring of treatment response.MethodsA panel of four autoantibodies (P53, PCNA, MUC-1, and C-MYC) was evaluated in serum of 11 normal cats and 34 cats diagnosed with mammary tumors before, during, and after the treatment using Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) assay. Out of the 34 cats, 15 did not receive any treatment, ten cats were treated with PPTT, three cats were treated by mastectomy, and six cats were treated with a combination of PPTT and surgery. ResultsThe panel showed high specificity and sensitivity to mammary tumors. The panel also was efficient in the evaluation of PPTT treatment response as their values decreased significantly after three months from the end of treatment. During the PPTT treatment course, the panel values increased within a month before the appearance of secondary tumors and/or metastasis but this increase was not statistically significant. As a result of the short follow-up period in this study, the studied panel was not valid in early diagnosis of primary and/or recurrent tumors nor the evaluation of treatment response of surgery alone or combination therapy. Cats treated with PPTT monotherapy showed the highest survival rate followed by cats treated with combination therapy then cats treated with mastectomy.ConclusionThe studied autoantibodies panel can be used to evaluate PPTT treatment response after three months of the end of treatment and may be efficient in early diagnosis of primary tumors, secondary tumors, recurrence, or metastasis.Trial registrationAll animals were handled in accordance with the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care and Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare guidelines. All animal experiments were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (CU-IACUC) Cairo University (code: CU II F 9 16). The animal experiments were carried out after the owner s permission. Written informed consent was provided by each cat owner for the treatments.