Modern molecular biological methods of diagnosing and monitoring oncological diseases, based on the phenomenon of the humoral immune response to tumor-associated antigens

Abstract

The humoral immune response to tumor-associated antigens in cancer patients can be used as the basis for diagnosing and monitoring the disease. Moreover, identification of the protein targets of such a response can serve as the basis for developing antigen-specific anticancer vaccines. This review discusses the main methods for identifying and studying tumor-associated antigens, recognized by serum antibodies, and also notes the problems facing researchers, which must be solved to introduce serologic antigen kits into the clinical diagnosis of cancer.