Expression of Cancer Testis Genes in Human Brain Tumors
2000
Cancer-testis
(CT) genes are expressed in a variety of human cancers but not in
normal tissues, except for testis tissue, and represent promising
targets for immunotherapeutic and gene therapeutic approaches. Because
little is known about their composite expression in human brain tumors,
we investigated the expression of seven CT genes (MAGE-3, NY-ESO-1,
HOM-MEL-40/SSX-2, SSX-1, SSX-4,HOM-TES-14/SCP-1, and HOM-TES-85)
in 88 human brain tumor specimens. Meningiomas expressed only
HOM-TES-14/SCP-1 (18% of meningiomas were HOM-TES-14/SCP-1
positive) and did not express any other CT genes. One ependymoma
was negative for all CT genes tested. SSX-4 was the only CT gene
expressed in oligodendrogliomas (2 of 5 cases), and it was also
expressed in oligoastrocytomas (3 of 4 cases) and astrocytomas (10 of
37 cases). Astrocytomas were most frequently positive for
HOM-TES-14/SCP-1 (40%) and SSX-4 (27%), followed by HOM-TES-85
(13%), SSX-2 (11%), and MAGE-3 (7%). Whereas MAGE-3 was detected
only in grade IV astrocytomas, the expression of the other CT genes
showed no clear correlation with histological grade. Of 39
astrocytomas, 60% expressed at least one CT gene, 21% expressed two
CT genes, and 8% coexpressed three CT genes of the seven CT genes
investigated. We conclude that a majority of oligoastrocytomas and
astrocytomas might be amenable to specific immunotherapeutic
interventions. However, the identification of additional tumor-specific
antigens with a frequent expression in gliomas is warranted to allow
for the development of widely applicable polyvalent glioma vaccines.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
28
References
115
Citations
NaN
KQI