Abstract
Cancer/Testis Antigens (CTAs) are a promising class of tumor antigens that have a limited expression in somatic tissues (testis, ovary, fetal, and placental cells). Aberrant expression of CTAs in cancer cells may lead to abnormal chromosome segregation and aneuploidy. CTAs are regulated by epigenetic mechanisms (DNA methylation and acetylation of histones) and are attractive targets for immunotherapy in cancer because the gonads are immune privileged organs and anti-CTA immune response can be tumor-specific. Multiple myeloma (MM) is an incurable hematological malignancy, and several CTAs have been detected in many MM cell lines and patients. Among CTAs expressed in MM we must highlight the MAGE-C1/CT7 located on the X chromosome and expressed specificity in the malignant plasma cells. MAGE-C1/CT7 seems to be related to disease progression and functional studies suggests that this CTA might play a role in cell cycle and mainly in survival of malignant plasma cells, protecting myeloma cells against spontaneous as well as drug-induced apoptosis.
Highlights
Genes that express these proteins were called cancer/testis antigens (CTAs) [5,6,7]
MAGE-C1/CT7 is considered a testis-restricted cancer/testis antigens (CTAs) by the current classification [6], because it is only expressed in normal adult testis and several studies have shown that this CTA is expressed in a wide variety of human tumors [6, 53, 55]
The same authors suggest that the CTAs in general are involved in the progression of myeloma, further increasing the aggressiveness of the tumor and that the MAGE-C1/CT7 might be considered as a gatekeeper gene for other CTAs [59]
Summary
Genes that express these proteins were called cancer/testis antigens (CTAs) [5,6,7]. The development of vaccines for specific-tumor antigens depends in part on the identification of a broad spectrum of immunogenic proteins expressed predominantly in human cancer. The MAGE genes are frequently expressed in human tumors of different histological types but not expressed in normal tissues except in male germ cells.
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