Investigating the potential of the Metastasis Associated Antigen 1 (MTA1) for cancer immunotherapy in a murine model

Immunotherapeutic approaches to target antigens associated with metastasis could provide a valuable means of targeting metastatic cells specifically. Metastasis Associated Antigen (MTA1) is one such relatively novel antigen, which has been associated with aggressive tumours, and shown to be over expressed in breast, oesophageal, colorectal, gastric and pancreatic cancer, amongst others. Various studies have indicated that MTA1 is essential for the transformation of cells and hence targeting it is unlikely to generate antigen loss variants. This study proposed to investigate MTA1 as a potential target for immunotherapy in a murine tumour model. We have shown that murine MTA1 (mMTA1) mRNA is highly expressed in most of the tumour cell lines as compared to normal tissues, which express mMTA1 at very low levels. Furthermore, to rule out any post-transcriptional modifications, MTA1 protein levels were also confirmed by western blotting. It was observed that most of the cell lines expressed MTA1 at high levels, whereas no protein expression was detected in the normal tissues by western blotting. Next, we decided to identify MHC class I and II restricted immunogenic peptides from murine and human MTA1 gene for syngeneic and transgenic mice respectively.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Nottingham Trent University

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Assudani, D

Language dc:language

en