Programa de Oncovirologia, Instituto Nacional de Câncer, Rio de Janeiro RJ 20231-050, Brazil.
Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY 10065, USA.
Viruses. 2020 Jul 6;12(7):726. doi: 10.3390/v12070726.
In diseases where epigenetic mechanisms are changed, such as cancer, many genes show altered gene expression and inhibited genes become activated. Human endogenous retrovirus type K (HERV-K) expression is usually inhibited in normal cells from healthy adults. In tumor cells, however, HERV-K mRNA expression has been frequently documented to increase. Importantly, HERV-K-derived proteins can act as tumor-specific antigens, a class of neoantigens, and induce immune responses in different types of cancer. In this review, we describe the function of the HERV-K HML-2 subtype in carcinogenesis as biomarkers, and their potential as targets for cancer immunotherapy.
在表观遗传机制发生改变的疾病中，如癌症，许多基因表现出改变的基因表达，而被抑制的基因被激活。在健康成年人的正常细胞中，人类内源性逆转录病毒 K 型（HERV-K）的表达通常受到抑制。然而，在肿瘤细胞中，HERV-K mRNA 的表达已被频繁记录为增加。重要的是，HERV-K 衍生的蛋白质可以作为肿瘤特异性抗原，即一类新抗原，在不同类型的癌症中诱导免疫反应。在这篇综述中，我们描述了 HERV-K HML-2 亚型作为生物标志物在致癌作用中的功能，以及它们作为癌症免疫治疗靶点的潜力。
