Tumor antigens

Abstract

Antigenic distinctions between malignant and normal cells are the key problem of cancer immunology. The researches in this direction allow clarifying not only the mechanism of cell malignancy, tumor progression and the way it escapes from immuno-surveillance of an organism, but also introduce a substantial contribution in clinical tumor immunology and immunotherapy. To date, a lot of the facts about antigens of the tumor cells are accumulated. In the introduced review are given classification and description of tumor antigens. We propose to unite tumor-associated antigens which are characteristic of normal nonhomologous to tumor tissues in a group of heteroorganic antigens. According to definition, such well-known antigens as cancer/testis antigens and onconeural antigens are included in this group.