Common antigenic determinant on ductular cells of normal pancreas, on mucosal cells of the gastrointestinal tract and on CEA

CEA is widely used as a human tumour marker and was first defined by Gold and Freedman in 1965 as an antigenic component in cancers derived from gastrointestinal tract epithelium. It is a member of a large family of immunologically related glycoproteins that vary in size and tissue distribution. Studies with c-DNA clones for CEA and NCA reveal that this family consist only of a limited number of different proteins with variable glycosylation, due to post-transcriptional modifications. The complete gene family includes about 10 closely related genes. Recently it was published that in contrast to mRNA coding for CEA, mRNA coding for NCA was expressed predominantly in cancerous tissues. A mono…