肿瘤相关基因MAGE-n的发现及研究进展

黑色素瘤抗原-n(MAGE-n)基因是本实验室从肝癌细胞系中克隆得到的MAGE家族新成员,该基因与已报道的MAGE家族基因不同,但与MAGE-A家族基因具有同源性,与MAGE-6、MAGE-3同源性最高。我们分别检测了MAGE-n在不同组织、细胞中的表达和分布情况,结果发现:在正常肝组织、肝硬化组织及其它非肿瘤组织中未检测到MAGE-n的表达,而在肝细胞癌、胃癌等恶性肿瘤组织中表达率较高,且在其他不同肿瘤中的表达水平有差异。后续研究筛选鉴定出了HLA-A2限制性CTL表位,体内外实验均显示出良好的抗肝癌免疫效应。MAGE-n的这种表达模式和免疫特性与MAGE家族其他基因相同,提示其可作为肿瘤免疫治疗,尤其是肝癌免疫治疗的靶分子,为肝癌的免疫治疗研究提供新的策略。现就MAGE-n的研究进展作以下综述。

Discovery and research progress of tumor related gene MAGE-n

MAGE-n gene is a new member of MAGE family cloned from hepatoma cell line in our laboratory.It is different from the reported MAGE family gene，but it has the same homology with MAGE-A family gene，and has the highest homology with MAGE-6 and MAGE-3.We detected the expression and distribution of MAGE-n in different tissues and cells.The results showed that the expression of MAGE-n was not detected in normal liver tissues，liver cirrhosis tissues and other non tumor tissues，however，the expression rate is higher in HCC，gastric cancer and other malignant tumors，and the expression level is different in other different tumors.The HLA-A2 restricted CTL epitope was screened and identified in the follow-up study，and showed good anti hepatoma immune effect in vitro and in vivo.This expression pattern and immune characteristics of MAGE-n are the same as other genes of MAGE family，suggesting that MAGE-n can be used as a target molecule in tumor immunotherapy，especially in liver cancer immunotherapy，and provide a new strategy for immunotherapy of liver cancer.In this paper，the research progress of MAGE-n is summarized as follows.