Zeitschrift für klinische und zelluläre Immunologie
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Potential Roles of Cancerous Immunoglobulins in the Immunology of Cancer Cells

Gregory Lee, Cheng-Yuan Huang, Yiting Tang and Hao Zhang

Expressions of immunoglobulins among various cancer cells have been known for decades. However, their potential roles and mechanisms of action are not fully understood and need further investigations. A monoclonal antibody designated as RP215 was found to react mainly with the carbohydrate-associated epitope of antigen receptors including immunoglobulins and T cell receptors on the surface of cancer cells, but not in normal immune cells. Therefore, RP215 was used as a probe to replace antibodies against cancerous immunoglobulins to study their roles in the immunology of cancer cells, through extensive biochemical and immunological studies. Both antigen ligands were found to have high correlations in terms of regulations of a number of genes involved in growth/proliferation of cancer cells (e.g. NFκB-1, IgG, P21, Cyclin D1, ribosomal P1 and c-fos) as well as toll-like receptors. These observations are consistent with the roles of cancerous immunoglobulins in growth/proliferation of cancer cells. Attempts were made to employ cancerous immunoglobulins isolated as CA215 from RP215 immunoaffinity column to detect any specific antigen or autoantibodies in pooled human serum samples. We believe that these anti-CA215 components may be present in human circulation for immune surveillance. From these studies, we believe that both normal and cancer immune systems may co-exist in our body and operate independently and simultaneously, for respective immune surveillance and protection. The balance of these two immune factors in our human body environment may be relevant to the outcome of cancer immunotherapy in humans.