Background: The melanoma-associated antigen (MAGE) genes families are found in different cancers, including non-small-cell lung cancers. These genes are silent in normal tissues, except for the testis. The goal of this study was to investigate the differentially expressed profile of the different MAGE genes subclass in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tumoral tissue.
Methods: Formalin-fixed paraffin embedded NSCLC resected tissues were collected from 31 patients hospitalized in our referral hospital, and 29 patients were diagnosed with either squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) or adenocarcinoma (ADC). We used a nested reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction, which comprised independent amplification of MAGE-A1, MAGE-A2, MAGE-A3/6, MAGE-A4, and MAGE-A12, to detect expression frequency of the MAGE-A family in lung tissue biopsies at both tumoral and nontumoral parts of patients' tissues.
Results: From 29 patients with diagnosis of either SCC (n = 16) or ADCs (n = 13), 58 samples were prepared. From 58 blocks sampled for this experiment, 37 tumoral tissue samples and 22 nontumoral tissue samples expressed at least one of the MAGE-A genes. MAGE-A4 gene had the highest incidence among all MAGE-A genes in both tumoral and nontumoral gens. In SCC and ADCs, the data showed expression of at least one of the MAGE-A genes in 59.4% and 69.2% of tumoral and nontumoral tissues, respectively.
Conclusion: The detection of the MAGE-A genes expression could be a molecular tumor marker for early diagnosis and potential targets for active immunotherapy in NSCLC, particularly in ADCs and SCC. Besides, the frequency of different subtypes of MAGE genes may vary in different regions of world.
Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.