NGcGM3 Ganglioside: A Privileged Target for Cancer Vaccines

Table 2

Relevant characteristics of NGcGM3 ganglioside as a cancer antigen, according to the antigen prioritization criteria described by Cheever et al. [7].

Criteria	Data on NGcGM3
Therapeutic function	Clinical data showing that a vaccine-induced clinical responses in at least a small number of patients [26–28]
Immunogenicity	T cell [29] and antibody [26, 27, 29, 30] responses elicited in clinical trials, spontaneous antibody observed in some patients [31, 32]
Oncogenicity	Increased expression in adult [31, 33–35] and pediatric [36] solid tumors, to be determined a clear association with oncogenic process or tissue differentiation
Specificity	Overexpressed in cancer with little or no expression in normal adult tissues [34]
Expression level and % positive cells	Highly expressed on most cancer cells in patients designated for treatment [31, 33, 35, 36]
Stem cell expression	Expression on most cancer cells [35, 36] but without information about putative stem cells
No. of patients with antigen-positive cancers	High level of expression in >80% of patients with a particular tumor type [35, 36]
No. of antigen epitopes	Short antigenic segment with one or few epitopes [31]
Cellular location of antigen expression	Expressed on the cell surface [31, 33, 35, 36] with little or no circulating antigen [10, 11]