Expression of serologically identified tumor antigens in acute leukemias

Niemeyer, Philipp; Türeci, Özlem; Eberle, Thomas; Graf, Norbert; Pfreundschuh, Michael; Sahin, Ugur

doi:10.1016/S0145-2126(02)00230-8

« Previous Next »Leukemia Research
Volume 27, Issue 7 , Pages 655-660, July 2003

Expression of serologically identified tumor antigens in acute leukemias

Philipp Niemeyer
- Department of Internal Medicine, Saarland University, D-66424 Homburg, Saar, Germany
Özlem Türeci
- Department of Internal Medicine, III. Medizinische Klinik und Poliklinik, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Obere Zahlbacherstr. 63, D-55113 Mainz, Germany
Thomas Eberle
- Department of Internal Medicine, Saarland University, D-66424 Homburg, Saar, Germany
Norbert Graf
- Department of Pediatrics, Saarland University, D-66424 Homburg, Saar, Germany
Michael Pfreundschuh
- Department of Internal Medicine, Saarland University, D-66424 Homburg, Saar, Germany
Ugur Sahin
- Department of Internal Medicine, III. Medizinische Klinik und Poliklinik, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Obere Zahlbacherstr. 63, D-55113 Mainz, Germany
- Corresponding author. Tel.: +49-6131-3933-488; fax: +49-6131-3933-364.

Received 12 July 2002; accepted 28 September 2002.

Abstract

Cancer/testis antigens (CTA) are an expanding family of immunogenic proteins selectively expressed in human neoplasms. As little is known about the expression of serologically identified CTA in leukemias so far, we investigated the expression of 5 CT genes (SSX-1, HOM-MEL-40/SSX-2, HOM-TES-14/SCP-1, SCP-3 and NY-ESO-1) in leukemic blood samples obtained from patients with either acute lymphatic leukemias (ALL) or myelocytic leukemia (AML). RT-PCR-analyses showed no expression of any of the CT-genes in the leukemia samples of 19 patients with AML, whereas frequent expression was found in ALL. In the 17 ALL cases studied, SCP3a, SSX-1, HOM-MEL-40/SXX-2 and HOM-TES-14/SCP-1 were expressed in 47, 29, 29 and 12%, respectively, whereas no case was positive for NY-ESO-1. 65% of patients with ALL showed expression of at least one, 41% of two or more of the five CT-genes investigated. We conclude that a majority of the ALLs might be amenable for specific immunotherapeutic interventions. However, the identification of additional antigens with a frequent expression in leukemias is warranted to allow the development of widely applicable polyvalent leukemia vaccines.

Keywords: Leukemia, Cancer/testis antigen, Specific target