Hasegawa H, Mori M, Haraguchi M, Ueo H, Sugimachi K, Akiyoshi T
Department of Surgery, Medical Institute of Bioregulation, Kyushu University, Beppu, Japan.
Arch Pathol Lab Med. 1998 Jun;122(6):551-4.
The 12 members of the human melanoma antigen-encoding (MAGE) gene family encode tumor-specific peptide antigens. Some antigens coded by the MAGE genes are potentially useful for cancer-specific immunotherapy. However, little information on the expression of these genes in human colon carcinomas is available. We investigated the expression of 10 of the 12 genes in human colon tissue.
Eighty pairs of tumor and normal tissue samples from the human colon were studied by means of reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction.
None of the genes was expressed in the 80 control samples of normal tissue. On the other hand, expression was recognized in tumor samples, ranging from 5% of samples for MAGE-6 to 44% for MAGE-8. Seventy of the 80 tumor samples (88%) expressed at least 1 of the 10 MAGE genes. The frequency of liver metastasis was significantly higher in cases with tumor samples that expressed MAGE-3 than in those that did not express this gene. This tendency was not observed for other members of the MAGE gene family. No significant differences were observed in the other clinicopathologic factors between any MAGE-positive and -negative tumor cases.
The MAGE genes were exclusively expressed in carcinoma tissues and not in normal tissues of the colon. The finding that nearly 90% of tumors expressed at least one MAGE gene indicates the possible clinical use of this gene for both immunotherapy and molecular diagnosis.
人类黑色素瘤抗原编码（MAGE）基因家族的12个成员编码肿瘤特异性肽抗原。一些由MAGE基因编码的抗原可能对癌症特异性免疫治疗有用。然而，关于这些基因在人类结肠癌中的表达情况的信息很少。我们研究了12个基因中的10个在人类结肠组织中的表达。
通过逆转录-聚合酶链反应研究了80对来自人类结肠的肿瘤和正常组织样本。
在80个正常组织对照样本中均未检测到这些基因的表达。另一方面，在肿瘤样本中检测到了表达，MAGE-6的表达样本占5%，MAGE-8的表达样本占44%。80个肿瘤样本中有70个（88%）表达了10个MAGE基因中的至少1个。表达MAGE-3的肿瘤样本患者的肝转移频率显著高于未表达该基因的患者。MAGE基因家族的其他成员未观察到这种趋势。在任何MAGE阳性和阴性肿瘤病例之间，其他临床病理因素均未观察到显著差异。
MAGE基因仅在结肠癌组织中表达，而在结肠正常组织中不表达。近90%的肿瘤表达至少一种MAGE基因这一发现表明该基因在免疫治疗和分子诊断方面可能具有临床应用价值。
