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e16065 Background: More than half of esophageal cancer patients are diagnosed as advanced, and although immunotherapy has shown strong anti-tumor activity in esophageal cancer patients, the survival benefits are limited. Melanoma-associated antigen 3 (MAGE-A3) is a cancer testis antigen that is almost not expressed in normal tissues, but highly expressed in various malignant tumors, including esophageal cancer. MAGE-A3 has restrictive expression and good immunogenicity, making it an ideal immunotherapy target. This study aims to explore the expression and clinical significance of MAGE-A3 in esophageal squamous cell (ESCC) . Methods: 103 ESCC tissues and 77 adjacent cancerous tissues were collected, and the expression of MAGE-A3 was detected using immunohistochemistry. Furthermore, the relationship between MAGE-A3 and clinical pathological features was analyzed, and the prognostic significance of MAGE-A3 for ESCC patients was analyzed with overall survival (OS) as the endpoint. Results: The positive expression rate of MAGE-A3 in ESCC tissue was 68.0% (70/103), and the positive expression rate in adjacent tissues was 7.8% (6/77). The positive expression in ESCC was significantly higher than that in adjacent tissues. In ESCC, the expression of MAGE-A3 is associated with age, pathological grade, TNM staging, and lymph node metastasis. Both univariate and multivariate analyses showed that the expression of MAGE-A3 is an independent risk factor affecting the prognosis of ESCC patients. The high expression of MAGE-A3 predicted poor OS for ESCC patients. Conclusions: MAGE-A3 is highly expressed in ESCC and is associated with poor prognosis, and could be a potential prognostic marker and therapeutic target.
Wang et al. (2024) studied this question.