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Target Discovery and Validation Reviews and Protocols

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Tumor Antigen <strong>Discovery</strong> 321<br />

development of clonal heterogeneity in most solid tumors. To circumvent the<br />

selection <strong>and</strong> outgrowth of antigen-negative tumor cell clones that have a proliferation<br />

advantage under the selection pressure of antigen specific<br />

immunotherapy, polyvalent immunotherapy approaches targeting several tumor<br />

antigens expressed at the same time by an individual tumor need to be developed.<br />

To design such polyvalent immunotherapy strategies, it will be necessary<br />

to dissect the antigenic profile of an individual tumor.<br />

2. Serological Analysis of Recombinant Tumor cDNA Expression Libraries<br />

The development of the new cloning technique SEREX with autologous serum<br />

(26) to identify tumor antigens based on spontaneous antibody responses in cancer<br />

patients made it possible to analyze tumor systems that typically do not grow<br />

in cell culture. Another advantage is that SEREX does not rely on tumor-specific<br />

T-cell lines (27). It was shown for several SEREX-defined antigens, e.g., the cancer-testis<br />

(CT) antigen NY-ESO-1, that spontaneous CD8 T-cell responses correlate<br />

with a spontaneous humoral immune response in patients with<br />

antigen-positive tumors. The repertoire of antibody-defined tumor antigens correlates<br />

tightly with the CD4 T-cell antigen repertoire of an individual patient. These<br />

antigens can potentially be recognized by CD8 T-cells (21,28). SEREX has been<br />

used to identify new tumor-associated antigens in different tumor types, which<br />

led to the identification of HOM-MEL-40, a gene identical to the synovial sarcoma/X<br />

breakpoint 2 gene (SSX2) involved in the t(x:18) translocation in synovial<br />

sarcoma (29), as well as other CT antigens, including NY-ESO-1 (30),<br />

CT7/MAGE-C1 (31), SCP-1 (32), cTAGE-1 (33), OY-TES-1 (34), HOM-TES-85<br />

(35), CAGE (36), cTAGE (33), <strong>and</strong> recently NY-SAR-35 (37). We were successful<br />

using SEREX to identify new differentiation antigens, such as RAB38 (38)<br />

<strong>and</strong> NY-BR-1 (39), as well as overexpressed antigens, such as tumor protein D52,<br />

NY-BR-62, <strong>and</strong> NY-BR-85. SEREX represents a very useful technique to define<br />

the individual CD4 T-cell tumor antigen repertoire. Today, more than 1200 antigens<br />

have been identified by SEREX <strong>and</strong> are deposited in the SEREX database<br />

of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (http:// www. licr.org/SEREX.html).<br />

3. Critical Steps in Antigen <strong>Validation</strong><br />

Several steps of analysis are necessary for SEREX-defined antigens to represent<br />

potential target antigens for active immunotherapy strategies in cancer<br />

patients. In the first step, a careful expression analysis for each individual antigen<br />

has to be performed by comparing the cDNA sequence to expressed sequence<br />

tag (EST) databases. Antigens with restricted expression by database analysis<br />

are being tested by reverse transcription (RT)-polymerase chain reaction by<br />

using a panel of normal tissue <strong>and</strong> tumor tissue cDNAs to confirm the restricted<br />

mRNA expression pattern.

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