Carcinoembryonic antigen and soluble interleukin-2 receptor in colon cancer

Colon cancer often secretes oncofetal antigens, like carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), that are important for diagnosis and monitoring of the disease. Recently, an increase of soluble interleukin_2 receptor (sIL2R) has been observed in a lot of neoplastic diseases. In particular, our previous data indicate that sIL2R was increase in a group of colon adenocarcinoma patients and it ws correlated with stage and grading of the disease. In this study we evaluate if CEA levels are in some way related with the evaluation of sIL2R in serum patients. Our results demonstrate that sIL2R is increased respect to healthy donors and is correlated with grading of the disease; CEA levels areincreased in patients and correlate with stage, according to pTNM classification, but not with sIL2R levels. Interesttingly, at stage III we observed a reduction of sIL2R. This study suggest that sIL2R and CEA are indipendent markers of disease in colon cancer. perhaps because of the different source of their production; sIL2R could be considered an indicator of the acvitiy of the immune system against the tumor.