Author: Ahmed Sharif Uddin Meklat Farouk Shahriar Masum Zhang Jian Mastulov Suhkrob Giannakouros Thomas Jewell Andrew Zhang Yana Lim Seah
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd
ISSN: 1465-3249
Source: Cytotherapy, Vol.11, Iss.2, 2009-04, pp. : 238-244
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Abstract
Background aims Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is an indolent disease. It is currently recommended that patients with CLL stages 0 and I follow a watchful waiting strategy. These patients are, therefore, a suitable group for testing immunotherapeutic approaches to avoid problems of immunosuppression as a result of disease progression and chemotherapy. In this study, we investigated the expression of SEMG-1 in early CLL to determine the suitability of SEMG-1 as a target for further development of tumor vaccines for early CLL. Methods A combination of reverse transcriptase (RT)-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and immunocytochemistry was used to evaluate the expression of SEMG-1 in early CLL. The results were correlated with Zap 70 expression. Recombinant SEMG-1 protein was used in an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to determine the presence of SEMG-1 antibodies (Ab) in serum from these patients. Results The SEMG-1 gene was expressed in 19/41 (46%) patients with early CLL. Gene expression was associated with protein synthesis in CLL cells. Protein expression, however, was heterogeneous within individual patients. Only transcripts encoding the SEMG-150 variant and not SEMG-143 were detected. SEMG-150 was expressed irrespective of the Zap 70 status. High-titer SEMG-1 IgG but not IgM Ab were detected in some of these patients, suggesting that SEMG-1-reactive immune responses are intact within the immune repertoire of early CLL patients. Conclusions SEMG-1 is expressed in nearly half of patients with early CLL and may be a target for further investigations into its use for immunotherapy of early CLL.
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