"Humors from Tumors": Diagnostic Potential of Peptides

Excerpt

Albright's suggestion in 1941 that some cancers secrete a parathyroid hormone-like substance (1) was substantiated 25 years later by immunoassays in three laboratories (2-4). It now appears that Albright's term "parathyroid hormone-like" was prescient, for Riggs and colleagues (5) have confirmed and extended Roof and associates' observation (6) that ectopic parathyroid hormone differs immunologically from that elaborated by normal, adenomatous, or hyperplastic parathyroid glands. Practically, the difference can help to distinguish ectopic from primary hyperparathyroidism, but the implications are much wider.

It is now clear that many nonendocrine tumors elaborate peptide hormones and enzymes. Clinically it is important that certain