Sperm fibrous sheath proteins: a potential new class of target antigens for use in human therapeutic cancer vaccines

Abstract

Cancer vaccines have been demonstrated to be a promising strategy for treating human neoplastic disease, but one of the limitations of these vaccines remains the paucity of target antigens to which to direct an effective immune response. We hypothesize that sperm fibrous sheath proteins may be a new class of useful antigens for developing successful cancer vaccines. This hypothesis is supported by the expression of two sperm fibrous sheath proteins, called sperm protein 17 and calcium-binding tyrosine-phosphorylation regulated protein, in tumors of unrelated histological origin and their capability to induce T cell-based immune responses.

This article was published in Cancer Immunity, a Cancer Research Institute journal that ceased publication in 2013 and is now provided online in association with Cancer Immunology Research.