Pattern of cancer/testis antigen expression in lung cancer patients

Cancer/testis (CT) antigens represent promising targets for immunotherapy. We investigated the composite expression of 13 CT antigens by RT-PCR in 79 lung cancer tissues and by immunohistochemistry in 22 lung cancer tissues. In the 79 lung cancer tissues, MAGE-3 (42%) was expressed most frequently and followed by NY-SAR-35 (33%), NY-ESO-1 (30%), MAGE-1 (27%), CT-7 (20%), MAGE-4 (19%), LAGE-1 (16%), and MAGE-10 (14%). Twenty-one tissues did not express any of the CT antigens tested, 58 (73%) expressed at least one, 36 (46%) co-expressed two, 24 (30%) co-expressed three, 17 (22%) co-expressed four, 14 (18%) co-expressed five, 8 (10%) co-expressed six, 4 (6%) co-expressed seven and 2 tissues expressed 9 of the 13 examined CT antigens. Expression of CT antigens was significantly associated with age (P<0.001), smoking history (P=0.009), and gender (P=0.001) of patients, whereas no correlation was found between the expression of CT antigens and other clinical factors, such as pT status, pN status, tumor stage, and histology history. The present results show that CT antigens are potential candidates in lung cancer patients for polyvalent immunotherapy.