Application of immunofluorescence-based detection of AFP-L3 in the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma

Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) together with Lens culinaris-agglutinin-reactive fraction of AFP (AFP-L3) serve as the preferred tumor markers for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) diagnosis. The authors performed diagnostic value analysis on AFP along with AFP-L3 as individual biomarkers and together to determine the optimal biomarker option. Researchers evaluated 149 HCC patient sera and 70 healthy control sera using automatic microchip capillary electrophoresis and liquid phase combination-based analysis. They found the area under the curve value for the conventional marker AFP reached 0.844 and the diagnostic value of AFP-L3 was 0.923. The diagnostic effectiveness did not enhance as both biomarkers were combined for testing. The performance metrics of AFP-L3 increase during disease progression which leads to complete diagnostic sensitivity and perfect specificity and an area under the curve value of 1 during Barcelona clinical liver cancer and D stage.