Extent Knowledge of Tumour Associated Antigens Can Be Useful in the Management of Cancer Patients - Essay Example

This research paper is focused on basic attempts of TAAs identification and the role they play for different types of tumors.

TAAS vs Cancer

The important role of tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) can be explained in the following way: they are present in cancer cells and can cause a powerful antitumor immune response among patients with lung carcinoma or any other type of cancer. There are the following types of identified TAAs: MAGE and BAGE families, gp 100, SART-1, tyrosinase, MUC-1, and others (Akimov, 2004). They are used by immunotherapy for treating cancer. Nevertheless, there is no satisfactorily level of this kind of treatment (Danussi, Coslovi, Campa, Mucignat, Spessotto, Uggeri, Paoletti, Colombatti, 2009). Therefore, there is a need to focus more on the identification of TAAs and available TAAs to target. There is an option to identify TAAS with the help of “serological analysis of recombinant c DNA expression libraries (SEREX), using tumor mRNA and autologous serum from patients with NSCLC. SEREX analysis of a range of different human tumor types has identified a number of tumor antigens with diagnostic and therapeutic potential” (Akimov, 2004). Different approaches are being currently developed and it is of high importance for modern researchers and scientists to identify the relevance of TAAs in dealing with different types of cancer.

Identification and processing of TAAs

Among the patients with lung cancer, TAAs were identified and assessed by RT-PCR. It can be said that TAAS are able to produce eliciting cytotoxic T cell responses. MAGE antigens are frequently identified. These cells can be found in different types of tumors.  MAGE-3 is the most broadly known CT antigen, which is the first and foremost target for cancer vaccines (Slovin, Ragupathi, Fernandez, Diani, Jefferson, Wilton, Kelly, Morris, Solit, Clausen, Livingston, Scher, 2007).   On the basis of different researchers and laboratory experiments, the scientists are looking for a correlation between TAAs identification and assessment of patient’s cell’s response to TAA’s.

Strategies for vaccine development have been correlated with the identification and management of TAAs. Highly attractive targets for cancer vaccines are cancer-testis (CT) antigens. These antigens are applicable for different forms of various human cancers. In accordance with current data, “MAGE antigens are expressed in about 40% of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cases [8]. In summary, this analysis provided further insights in the immunogenicity of lung cancer with respect to antigen-specific humoral and cellular immune responses” (Vonderheide, 2002). There is a clear tendency to find out universal antigens. The most serious preventive factor for proper searching for TAAs is that different patients with different forms of cancer have not been treated by so-called “universal” TAAs. Therefore, there is a need for universal tumor-associated antigens. Consequently, modern scientists and researchers are focused on searching for a new type of TAAs dealing with different types of tumors. One of the most optimal methods is “epitope deduction”, which begins with a number of database analyses focused on appropriate gene products selection and further scanning of the deduced protein sequence for peptides, known as MHC binding motifs (Vonderheide, 2002). This method is independent of the existence of an innate anti-tumor T-cell response, which is considered in terms of molecular immunology. It can be said that a proper analysis of patient immune responses is unable to identify useful tumor antigens for different types of cancer because there is no paucity of baseline T-cell responses against these types of tumors.

Conclusion

Great importance of antigens can be explained in the following way:  they should be able to evoke appropriate T-cell responses with a specific feature of peptide specificity and MHC restriction. Thus, universal or ideal tumor antigens should have the following features: (1) be responsive to different types of human cancers, (2) comprise peptide sequences, binding to MHC molecules, (3) be processed by tumor cells in order to enable antigen-derived peptides to bind to MHC molecules, and (4) be identified by the T-cell repertoire in an MHC-restricted fashion, enabling the expansion of naive CTL precursors resembling certain T-cell receptors.