Current Oncology (May 2021)

Cancer Testis Antigen, NOL4, Is an Immunogenic Antigen Specifically Expressed in Small-Cell Lung Cancer

  • Ye-Rin Kim,
  • Ki-Uk Kim,
  • Jung-Hee Lee,
  • Deok-Won Kim,
  • Jae-Heun Chung,
  • Yeong-Dae Kim,
  • Dong-Hoon Shin,
  • Min-Ki Lee,
  • Yong-Il Shin,
  • Sang-Yull Lee

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/curroncol28030179
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 28, no. 3
pp. 1927 – 1937

Abstract

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To identify cancer/testis (CT) antigens and immunogenic proteins, immunoscreening of testicular and small-cell lung cancer cell line NCI-H889 cDNA libraries was performed using serum obtained from a small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) patient. We obtained 113 positive cDNA clones comprised of 74 different genes, designated KP-SCLC-1 through KP-SCLC-74. Of these genes, 59 genes were found to be related to cancers by EMBASE analysis. Three of these antigens, including KP-SCLC-29 (NOL4), KP-SCLC-59 (CCDC83), and KP-SCLC-69 (KIF20B), were CT antigens. RT-PCR and western blot analysis showed that NOL4 was frequently present in small-cell lung cancer cell lines (8/9, 8/9). In addition, NOL4 mRNA was weakly, or at a low frequency, or not detected in various cancer cell lines. Our results reveal that NOL4 was expressed at protein levels in small-cell lung cancer tissues (10/10) but not detected in lung adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma by immunohistochemical analysis. Serological response to NOL4 was also evaluated by western blot assay using NOL4 recombinant protein. A humoral response against NOL4 proteins was detected in 75% (33/44) of small-cell lung cancer patients and in 65% (13/20) of healthy donors by a serological western blot assay. These data suggest that NOL4 is a specific target that may be useful for diagnosis and immunotherapy in SCLC.

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