Providing a Series of Specific Ligands of Cancerous Cells for Developing a New Generation of Immunotoxins

Different generations of the immunotoxins could be targeting cancerous cells by interactions between ligand and cell surface specific antigens. Therefore, identification and characterization of these types of ligands and corresponding antigens, which are constantly growing, would be a milestone step to design a novel generation of immunotoxins. Bearing in mind, a profile of cell surface specific antigens was collected, and then the expressions of them were measured via in silico program on several normal and cancerous tissues. Corresponding ligands of the selected antigens were then investigated by String, and validated through docking process. On the other hand, structural and functional characteristics as well as post-translational modifications of the ligands were examined. Finally, amino acids of ligands that are involved in interaction to antigens were determined. The results of this study led to introducing several antigens including Gp75, MAGEA3, APCs, PSA, and MSLN with high expression on the surface of some cancerous cells. Moreover, this investigation revealed HLA-A, ALDH3A2, MLANA, AR, CALB2, SILV, CALU, and GAGE1 as ligands with high affinity to one or more selected antigens. Meanwhile, ligand miniaturization led to design a new generation of ligands with 30 amino acid in length and limited in post-translational modification.Taken together, these results introduced a series of cell surface specific antigens which can use for cancer diagnosis, and provide a numerous of candidate ligands to develop a new generation of immunotoxins for targeting breast, prostate, ovary and melanoma cancer cells.