Abstract
Recent developments have set the stage for immunotherapy as a supplement to conventional cancer treatment. Consequently, a significant effort is required to further improve efficacy and specificity, particularly the identification of optimal therapeutic targets for clinical testing. Cancer/testis antigens are immunogenic, highly cancer-specific, and frequently expressed in various types of cancer, which make them promising candidate targets for cancer immunotherapy, including cancer vaccination and adoptive T-cell transfer with chimeric T-cell receptors. Our current understanding of tumor immunology and immune escape suggests that targeting oncogenic antigens may be beneficial, meaning that identification of cancer/testis antigens with oncogenic properties is of high priority. Recent work from our lab and others provide evidence that many cancer/testis antigens, in fact, have oncogenic functions, including support of growth, survival and metastasis. This novel insight into the function of cancer/testis antigens has the potential to deliver more effective cancer vaccines. Moreover, immune targeting of oncogenic cancer/testis antigens in combination with conventional cytotoxic therapies or novel immunotherapies such as checkpoint blockade or adoptive transfer, represents a highly synergistic approach with the potential to improve patient survival.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | OncoTarget |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 18 |
| Pages (from-to) | 15772-87 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| ISSN | 1949-2553 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 30 Jun 2015 |
Keywords
- Antigens, Neoplasm
- Humans
- Immunotherapy
- Male
- Neoplasms
- Testis
