HIGH-FREQUENCY OF THE EXPRESSION OF THE MAGE GENE FAMILY IN HUMAN ESOPHAGEAL-CARCINOMA

The human gene MAGE encodes tumor specific peptide antigens and consis ts of at least 12 families. Some antigens coded by the MAGE genes may be potentially useful for cancer specific immunotherapy. There is, how ever, so far little information on the expression of these gene famili es in human esophageal carcinomas. We investigated the expression of M AGE-1, -2, -3, -4, -6, -8, -9, -10, -11, and -12 genes in 24 human eso phageal carcinoma cell lines, and in 50 pairs of tumor and correspondi ng normal tissue specimens from the human esophagus by means of revers e transcription polymerase chain reaction. The expression rate varied from 13% of MAGE-6 and 8 to 79% of MAGE-4 in the esophageal carcinoma cell lines, and from 6% of MAGE-6 to 62% of MAGE-4 in clinical tumor s amples. The most frequently and the least expressed gene were the MAGE -4 and MAGE-6 genes, respectively, in both the cell lines and the clin ical samples. Forty-seven of the 50 clinical tumors expressed at least one MAGE gene. No significant clinicopathologic difference between th e tumor cases was observed, regardless of the presence or absence of M AGE gene expression. The findings of this study thus demonstrated that the MAGE gene family is frequently expressed in clinical samples as w ell as in the cell lines of human esophageal carcinomas. Therefore, to identify the MAGE gene family may be useful, not only for esophageal tumor specific immunotherapy but for molecular diagnostic usage as wel l.