Rheumatology fellow Rachel Wallwork discusses her latest research results on how an antibody in systemic sclerosis patients with cancer may be a key biomarker to predict possible cancer development.
Hi I'm Rachel Wallwork, one of the third year rheumatology fellows. I'm here to tell you about our work looking at an antibody called anti Sjogren's syndrome scleroderma auto antigen one or anti S. S. S. C. A. One and cancer and patients with scleroderma. We're discovering more and more that there are subgroups of patients with systemic sclerosis who have an increased cancer risk. These subgroups can be identified by their auto antibodies. For example, we know that patients who are anti RNA polymerase three positive have greater cancer risk around the time of scleroderma onset compared to those who are anti RNA polymerase three negative. Understanding the associations between antibodies and cancer allows us to target more intensive cancer screening to patients at greatest risk. Our study was developed because it was known that anti S. S. S. C. A. One antibodies had been found in patients with systemic sclerosis. And new data suggested that the target of this antibody, the antigen S. S. S. C. A. One might be important in cancer development. This made us wonder if these antibodies maybe markers for patients at risk of cancer. So, to investigate this further, we selected patients with cancer and those without cancer from the johns Hopkins Center Research registry to evaluate whether they had these antibodies we included 209 patients with a history of cancer and 205 patients without a history of cancer. In our study. We then looked to see if these antibodies the anti S. S. S. C. One antibodies were more likely in patients with a history of cancer. And overall we found that seven per se. The sample had anti S. S. S. C. One antibodies. Therefore we're anti SSC one antibody positive and that patients with these antibodies had a 2.5 times higher odds of cancer than those without the antibodies after controlling for other cancer risk factors such as older age of onset. The anti RNA polymerase three antibodies among others. When we looked at the timing of the cancers compared to when the scleroderma developed, we learned that the cancers occurred later um suggesting that these antibodies may provide some anti tumor immunity and delay the clinical cancer development. We also found that patients with these antibodies have more cardiac involvement and more severe rain nodes than those who are anti S. S. S. C. One negative. So further research needs to validate these findings, make sure that they're true in larger groups of patients and explore when these antibodies develop in the course of disease, are they stable over time? Or do we need to test repeatedly in order to find them? Thank you so much for your time
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