Expression of melanoma antigen-encoding 3 (MAGE-3) in the tissues of colorectal cancer (CRC) in different grades of differentiation / 解放军医学杂志

Objective To study the expression of MAGE-3 in colorectal cancer (CRC) with different differentiation grades. Method Immunohistochemical technique for MAGE-3 antigen was performed in paraffin embedded sections of 101 CRC specimens. The relationship between differentiation and Dukes classification of CRC and the expression of MAGE-3 antigen was analyzed. Result MAGE-3 was only expressed in tumor tissues with the total positive rate of 31.7%. The rate and intensity of MAGE-3 in poorly differentiated group were higher than that of the well differentiated group (P0.05). Conclusion MAGE-3 may be a specific molecular differentiation related marker of CRC. Its antigen may have potential use as a new peptide vaccine for immunotherapy for CRC.