Expression of novel cancer/testis antigen TMEM31 increases during metastatic melanoma progression

Abstract

Abstract. Cancer/testis (CT) antigens are promising targets for immunotherapy due to their restricted expression in the germ cells of the testis in healthy tissue and high immunogenicity. The aim of the present study was to determine whether transmembrane protein 31 (TMEM31) is a CT antigen and to investigate the pattern of TMEM31 expression during the progression of melanoma. The pattern of expression of human TMEM31 mRNA in multiple human tissues was determined through reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction analysis. TMEM31 protein expression was analyzed in the human testis, in addition to 128 primary melanoma and 64 metastatic melanoma samples through immunohistochemistry analysis. TMEM31 was identified to be predominantly expressed in the testis and weakly expressed in the placenta. In addition, TMEM31 protein expression was detected in 120/190 (63.16%) melanoma samples (primary and metastatic). The intensity of TMEM31 staining in metastatic and primary melanomas was determined through semiquantitative integrated optical density (IOD) analysis, and identified to be significantly increased in metastatic melanoma compared with primary melanoma (0.24±0.03 vs. 0.09±0.01 IOD/area; P<0.001). The expression of TMEM31 protein was significantly increased in metastatic compared with primary melanoma samples (76.56 vs. 56.35%; P=0.017). The results of the present study suggest that TMEM31 is a novel CT antigen that serves an essential role in melanoma metastasis, in addition to being a potential immunotherapeutic target for the treatment of patients with melanoma.

A novel prognostic signature and potential therapeutic drugs based on tumor immune microenvironment characterization in breast cancer

“…Transmembrane protein 31 (TMEM31) was the element gene of TPS with most coefficient value. Recently, it has been recognized as one of the cancer/testis (CT) antigens which normally restricted in the germ cells of the testis in healthy tissue but also surprisingly up-regulated in the malignant tumor of melanoma [ 24 , 25 ]. The expression characteristics of TMEM31 was investigated by comparing the level of TMEM31 in primary melanomas and metastatic ones.…”

PRAMEF12 , a novel cancer/testis gene, regulates proliferation and apoptosis to promote progression of glioma

“…Total RNA extraction and cDNA synthesis were performed as previously reported [ 14 ]. Briefly, total RNA from normal tissues of the testis, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, colon, liver, pancreas, kidney, prostate, adrenal gland, uterus, breast, ovary, bronchus, lung, heart, cerebellum, cerebrum, lymph node, skin and spleen were purchased from TaKaRa Bio Co., Ltd. (Dalian, China).…”

“…RT-PCR was performed as previously reported [ 14 ]. Forward and reverse oligonucleotide primers specific to PRAMEF12 and GAPDH were designed using Primer Express v. 3.0 software (Thermo Fisher Scientific, MA, USA).…”

Safety evaluation on defatted soybean particles after nanofabrication

“…The ultrastructural distribution of nDSP was observed with Tecnai 12 Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM, FEI Co., Hillsboro, USA). Image-Pro Plus 6.0 software (Media Cybernetics, UK) was used to calculate the number of positive signals (Jia et al 2012;Li et al 2017).…”