Cancer Testis Antigens and Immunotherapy: A new Dawn

¹ State Key Laboratory of Oncogenes and Related Genes, Ninth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China. Shanghai Institute for Advanced Immunochemical Studies, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, China
² Shanghai Institute of Precision Medicine, Shanghai, China
³ Key Laboratory of Cell Differentiation and Apoptosis of Chinese Ministry of Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China

^* Corresponding author: sophia0909@sjtu.edu.cn

Abstract

Immunotherapy for cancer has been recognized as the fourth therapeutic method after surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, which can prevent postoperative metastasis and recurrence and reduce or even eliminate the toxic and side effects of chemoradiotherapy. The development of successful immunotherapy strategies need to use cancer antigens which can be identified by the host’s immune system. This method’s ability in causing antitumor immune response has been fully proved, but it also faces enormous risks and challenges, as finding the highly efficient and specific tumor markers is very difficult. Cancer-testis antigens(CTA) are a special kind of tumor antigens with normal expression restricted to male germ cells in the testis but not in adult somatic tissues. The immune privileged status of CTA gives tumor specificity and makes it an ideal candidate for targeted immunotherapy biomarkers. Here, we briefly review the research history, expression characteristics of CTA, molecular mechanisms of CT gene, and the bright future of immunotherapy in cancer treatment.