Immunization with placenta-specific 1 (plac1) induces potent anti-tumor responses and prolongs survival in a mouse model of melanoma.

Purpose: Melanoma is a malignant and metastatic form of skin cancer, which is not diagnosed in early stages of the disease. Nowadays, immunotherapy is changing the treatment landscape for metastatic melanoma. Placenta-specific1 (PLAC1) is a cancer-testis-placenta (CTP) antigen with differential expression in melanoma tissues.

Optimization of Expression and Purification of Recombinant Mouse plac1.

Background: Placenta-specific 1 (PLAC1) is one of the recently-discovered Cancer-Testis-Placenta (CTP) antigen with restricted normal tissue and ectopic expression in a wide range of cancer cells from different histological origins. The production of recombinant human PLAC1 has already been optimized; however, no study has been reported so far on the production and purification of mouse plac1. In this study, mouse plac1 expression and purification was optimized in a prokaryotic system and the effects of the generated proteins on inducing humoral responses in mice were investigated.

Discovery of a potential biomarker for immunotherapy of melanoma: PLAC1 as an emerging target.

Background: Melanoma has increased in incidence worldwide prompting investigators to search for new biomarkers for targeted immunotherapy of this disease. Placenta specific 1 (PLAC1) is a new member of cancer-testis antigens with widespread expression in many types of cancer. Here, we aimed to study for the first time the expression pattern of PLAC1 in skin cancer samples including cutaneous melanoma, basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) in comparison to normal skin and nevus tissues and potential therapeutic effect of anti-PLAC1 antibody in melanoma cancer cell lines .