BMC Cancer Research article BioMed Central Open Access Identification of a panel of tumor-associated antigens from breast carcinoma cell lines, solid tumors and testis cDNA libraries displayed on lambda phage Emiliano Pavoni1, Paola Vaccaro1, Andrea Pucci1, Giorgia Monteriù1, Elisa Beghetto1, Stefano Barca2, Maria Luisa Dupuis2, Adolfo De Pasquale Ceratti3, Antonio Lugini3, Maurizio Cianfriglia2, Enrico Cortesi3, Franco Felici1,4 and Olga Minenkova*1 Address: 1Kenton Labs, c/o Sigma Tau, Pomezia (Rome), 00040, Italy, 2Laboratorio di Immunologia, Reparto Immunologia dei Tumori, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Roma, 00100, Italy, 3Oncologia Medica, Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale e Patologia, Facoltà di Medicina e Chirurgia, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", Rome, 00100, Italy and 4Dipartimento di Scienze Microbiologiche, Genetiche e Molecolari, Università di Messina, 98100, Italy Email: Emiliano Pavoni - pavoni@kenton.it; Paola Vaccaro - vaccaro@kenton.it; Andrea Pucci - pucci@kenton.it; Giorgia Monteriù - monteriu@kenton.it; Elisa Beghetto - beghetto@kenton.it; Stefano Barca - sbarca@iss.it; Maria Luisa Dupuis - mldupuis@iss.it; Adolfo De Pasquale Ceratti - adolfo.ceratti@tiscali.it; Antonio Lugini - antoniolugini@libero.it; Maurizio Cianfriglia - cianfri@iss.it; Enrico Cortesi - enrico.cortesi@uniroma1.it; Franco Felici - felici@kenton.it; Olga Minenkova* - minenkova@kenton.it * Corresponding author Published: 12 November 2004 BMC Cancer 2004, 4:78 doi:10.1186/1471-2407-4-78 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/4/78 Received: 18 June 2004 Accepted: 12 November 2004 © 2004 Pavoni et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Tumor-associated antigens recognized by humoral effectors of the immune system are a very attractive target for human cancer diagnostics and therapy. Recent advances in molecular techniques have led to molecular definition of immunogenic tumor proteins based on their reactivity with autologous patient sera (SEREX). Methods: Several high complexity phage-displayed cDNA libraries from breast carcinomas, human testis and breast carcinoma cell lines MCF-7, MDA-MB-468 were constructed. The cDNAs were expressed in the libraries as fusion to bacteriophage lambda protein D. Lambda-displayed libraries were efficiently screened with sera from patients with breast cancer. Results: A panel of 21 clones representing 18 different antigens, including eight proteins of unknown function, was identified. Three of these antigens (T7-1, T11-3 and T11-9) were found to be overexpressed in tumors as compared to normal breast. A serological analysis of the 21 different antigens revealed a strong cancer-related profile for at least five clones (T6-2, T6-7, T7- 1, T9-21 and T9-27). Conclusions: Preliminary results indicate that patient serum reactivity against five of the antigens is associated with tumor disease. The novel T7-1 antigen, which is overexpressed in breast tumors and recognized specifically by breast cancer patient sera, is potentially useful in cancer diagnosis. Page 1 of 10 (page number not for citation purposes)