TY - JOUR

T1 - The Melanoma-Associated Antigen Family A (MAGE-A): A Promising Target for Cancer Immunotherapy?

AU - Alsalloum, Alaa

AU - Shevchenko, Julia A

AU - Sennikov, Sergey

N1 - Funding: This study was supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 21-65-00004): https://rscf.ru/en/project/21-65-00004/ (accessed on 20 April 2021).

PY - 2023/3/15

Y1 - 2023/3/15

N2 - Early efforts to identify tumor-associated antigens over the last decade have provided unique cancer epitopes for targeted cancer therapy. MAGE-A proteins are a subclass of cancer/testis (CT) antigens that are presented on the cell surface by MHC class I molecules as an immune-privileged site. This is due to their restricted expression to germline cells and a wide range of cancers, where they are associated with resistance to chemotherapy, metastasis, and cancer cells with an increasing potential for survival. This makes them an appealing candidate target for designing an effective and specific immunotherapy, thereby suggesting that targeting oncogenic MAGE-As with cancer vaccination, adoptive T-cell transfer, or a combination of therapies would be promising. In this review, we summarize and discuss previous and ongoing (pre-)clinical studies that target these antigens, while bearing in mind the benefits and drawbacks of various therapeutic strategies, in order to speculate on future directions for MAGE-A-specific immunotherapies.

AB - Early efforts to identify tumor-associated antigens over the last decade have provided unique cancer epitopes for targeted cancer therapy. MAGE-A proteins are a subclass of cancer/testis (CT) antigens that are presented on the cell surface by MHC class I molecules as an immune-privileged site. This is due to their restricted expression to germline cells and a wide range of cancers, where they are associated with resistance to chemotherapy, metastasis, and cancer cells with an increasing potential for survival. This makes them an appealing candidate target for designing an effective and specific immunotherapy, thereby suggesting that targeting oncogenic MAGE-As with cancer vaccination, adoptive T-cell transfer, or a combination of therapies would be promising. In this review, we summarize and discuss previous and ongoing (pre-)clinical studies that target these antigens, while bearing in mind the benefits and drawbacks of various therapeutic strategies, in order to speculate on future directions for MAGE-A-specific immunotherapies.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85151322819&origin=inward&txGid=fa30ecfa03eb6a8ad07f63304b141a72

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/21a956bb-7c7f-37e4-8701-b2a5f581ca8e/

U2 - 10.3390/cancers15061779

DO - 10.3390/cancers15061779

M3 - Review article

C2 - 36980665

VL - 15

JO - Cancers

JF - Cancers

SN - 2072-6694

IS - 6

M1 - 1779

ER -