Soluble c-Met Is a Reliable and Sensitive Marker to Detect c-Met Expression Level in Lung Cancer

Abstract EN

c-Met has been demonstrated as an attractive target in lung cancer therapy.

Current studies showed that detection of c-Met status in tumor is critical in Met-targeted therapy.

However not all patients are suitable for tissue sample collection.

It is important to discover novel surrogate markers to detect c-Met status.

In the study, soluble c-Met (s-Met) in plasma from 146 Chinese lung cancer patients and 40 disease-free volunteers was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent.

In parallel, expression of c-Met in those tumors was also assessed by immunohistochemistry.

Results showed that, in 146 lung cancer patients, 93 were c-Met expression positive and 74 of 93 were overexpressed.

In c-Met-overexpressed patients, plasma s-Met was significantly increased.

And further studies showed that plasma s-Met linearly correlated with c-Met expression in tumor.

After tumor was removed in Met-overexpressed patients via resection, plasma s-Met significantly decreased to basal level.

In addition, plasma s-Met showed to be poorly correlated with tumor size in Met-overexpressed patients.

These results demonstrated that plasma s-Met is a sensitive and reliable marker to detect c-Met overexpression in lung cancers, and it is independent of tumor volume.