Cancer-testis antigens in tumor biology and immunotherapy.

摘要

The field of tumor immunology has long appreciated that the immune system can recognize and even reject tumors based on their antigenic profile, but the identification of human tumor antigens themselves proved elusive until 1991- The breakthrough came with the discovery of MAGEA1, an antigen identified through a laborious screening process that searched for genes conferring susceptibility to cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) isolated from a melanoma patient.1 The antigen was found to be expressed on other melanoma cell lines and cell lines of several other tumor types, but not on normal tissues except for testis.