The goal of this study was to identify the optimal marker or marker combinations for detection of gastrointestinal malignancies using reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain (RT-PCR) reaction. To detect the presence of tumors, we analyzed mucin 1 (MUC1), cytokeratin 19 (CK19), cytokeratin 20 (CK20), and human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) mRNA in the peripheral blood of 31 patients with gastrointestinal cancer and 30 healthy individuals. | Turkish Journal of Biology Turk J Biol (2014) 38: 848-857 © TÜBİTAK doi: Research Article Evaluation of MUC1, CK20, and hTERT expression in peripheral blood of gastrointestinal cancer patients in search of diagnostic criteria 1, 1 1 2 1 Sibel KÜÇÜKYILDIRIM *, Beril ERDEM , Emel SAĞLAR , Zülfikar POLAT , Hatice MERGEN 1 Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey 2 Department of Gastroenterology, Gülhane Military Medical Academy, Ankara, Turkey Received: Accepted: Published Online: Printed: Abstract: The goal of this study was to identify the optimal marker or marker combinations for detection of gastrointestinal malignancies using reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain (RT-PCR) reaction. To detect the presence of tumors, we analyzed mucin 1 (MUC1), cytokeratin 19 (CK19), cytokeratin 20 (CK20), and human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) mRNA in the peripheral blood of 31 patients with gastrointestinal (esophagus, stomach, and colorectal) cancer and 30 healthy individuals. In RT-PCR analysis of the peripheral blood, (24/31), (19/31), and (14/31) of cancer patients were positive for MUC1, CK20, and hTERT mRNA, respectively. According to our results, any one of these mRNA markers is a predictor of the presence of gastrointestinal tumors (P ). Our results showed that combined analysis of MUC1 and CK20 helps to decrease the false-positive rate of detection (Table 3). The predictive values of the 3 mRNA markers for tumor presence were analyzed using univariate logistic regression analysis (Tables 5 and 6). According to our results, any one of these mRNA markers is a predictor of the presence of gastrointestinal tumors (P < ) and colorectal tumors (P < ). These markers do not have predictive value for presence of metastasis in gastrointestinal tumors (Table 7). ROC curve analyses of
