Cancer Testis Antigens: Novel Biomarkers and Targetable Proteins for Ovarian Cancer

Abstract

Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer death in women and the leading cause from gynecological malignancies. Despite the recently improved outcomes of new chemotherapeutical agents in the therapy of ovarian cancer and the increased 5-year survival rate, the mortality of this malignancy disease remains unchanged. Ovarian cancer therapy is often correlated to the stage of the tumor, but the first step is usually surgical treatment. Afterward, various courses of chemotherapy and radiation are suggested. Obviously, the higher the developmental stage of the tumor, the less the probability is in eradicating it surgically, especially in relation to metastasis. It is clear that an early diagnosis of ovarian cancer is important for the survival of these patients. In order to identify ovarian cancer patients in the early stages, a number of studies are focusing on a particular class of antigens called cancer testis antigens. These antigens display high expression in tumors of different histology, but are normally restricted to the testis and have low or no expression in normal tissues. The testes are an immunologically-privileged site due to the presence of tight junctions between adjacent Sertoli cells that constitute the blood-testis barrier, which prevents auto-immune reactions. In the past few years, some of these antigens were demonstrated to be very promising for the early diagnosis and development of vaccines for ovarian cancer. This review aims to underline the most reliable cancer testis antigens under investigation at this moment.

Human Embryonic Stem Cells - a Potential Vaccine for Ovarian Cancer

“…Many subsequent reports have affirmed the general idea that immunologic rejection of transplantable tumors, as well as prevention of carcinogenesis, may be affected by vaccination with embryonic/fetal material (LeMevel and Wells, 1973;Coggin et al, 1980). In fact, a significant proportion of the human cancer vaccine trials to date are targeted against embryonic antigens such as carcinoembryonic antigen (Greiner et al, 2002) cancer/testes antigen (ChirivaInternati, 2011;Mirandola et al, 2011) and α-fetoprotein etc (Toyoda et al, 2011). Unfortunately, targeting one antigen alone is unlikely to generate effective antitumor immune responses to mediate tumor rejection because of rapid appearance of escape mutants and the general inefficiency of monovalent cancer vaccines (Buonaguro et al, 2011;Durrant et al, 2011).…”

Cancer-Testis Antigens: A Novel Group of Tumor Biomarkers in Ovarian Cancers

“…One possible solution for this problem is application of polyvalent vaccines. Such strategy is also regarded as a solution for downregulation of certain CTAs in recurrent tumors due to immune escape (28). Such phenomenon has been observed in a patient who experienced a NY-ESO-1-negative tumor recurrence after complete objective response to NY-ESO-1 peptide vaccine (78).…”

“…2016; 9(6):e4993. Some antigens such as SP17 have been previously attributed to CTA family (28). However, recent data demonstrated its expression in a wide array of normal tissues (10).…”

Expression of Cancer-Testis Genes Prame, Ny-Eso1, Gage1, Mage A3, Mage A6, Mage A12, Ssx1, Sllp1, Pasd1 in Patients With Multiple Myeloma, Their Influence on Overall Survival and Relapse Rate

“…Однако обнаружены РТА были намного раньше, с 1980 г. и по настоящее время ведется их активное изучение и по-полнение списка. Впервые они выделены и описаны при исследовании плоскоклеточной карциномы пи-щевода [2][3][4][5]. РТА можно разделить на 2 группы:…”

“…• кодируемые генами, расположенными на хромо-соме Х (Х-РТА) [6]; • кодируемые генами, расположенными на всех других хромосомах, кроме Х [5]. В группу Х-РТА входит более половины всех из-вестных РТА.…”