Intramolecular antigenicity of MUC1, a candidate for cancer vaccines.

Cancer is a big public health problem as well as a medical challenge. The tumor-associated carbohydrate antigens and glycopeptide antigens derived from, for example, the MUC1 mucin glycoprotein or tumor mucin antigen, are attractive targets for the immunotherapy of cancer, owing to their expression by malignant cells. MUC1 glycoprotein is present in endometriotic lesions and over-expressed in many cancers and the MUC1 immune response is known to provide a protective host defense mechanism against cancer. In this work, the author studied the antigenicity pattern within the MUC1 molecule by an advanced bioinformatics method. It can be seen that the amino acid in the middle portion of the sequence pose high antigenicity. This part could be selected for further vaccine development.