Immunogenic Targets for Specific Immunotherapy in Multiple Myeloma

Table 1

Expression profile and immune responses of promising immunotargets in MM.

Antigen	Function	Expression in MM	Expression in normal tissue	Humoral response in MM	CD8+ T-cell response in MM	CD4+ T-cell response in MM	Clinical trials in MM
Idiotype	Essential for B-cells function and survival [13]	Nearly 100% [13]	B-cells [13]	Yes [14]	Yes [13, 15]	Yes [15]	Phase I-II, clinical response was disappointing [16]
MUC1	Multiple functions including surface barrier, signal transduction, and so forth [17]	Fully glycosylated: 73% Differentiation-dependent glycoforms: 59% Cancer-associated glycoforms: 36% [18]	Ubiquitous on the luminal surface of most simple epithelial cells [19]	Yes [20]	Yes [21]	Yes [21]	ND
WT1	Transcription factor [22]	Frequent but at a low level [23]	Placenta [24]	ND	Yes [25]	ND	One patient reported, showing decreased myeloma cells [25],
MAGE-C1	Probably dysregulation of the cell cycle [26]	70–80% [27–30]	Testis, placenta [31]	Yes [32]	Yes [26]	ND	ND
Ropporin	Unknown	44% [33]	Testis [34]	Yes [34]	Yes [33]	ND	ND
RHAMM	Formation of mitotic spindle, signal transduction [35]	100% [36]	Testis, placenta, thymus [24, 35]	ND	Yes [37, 38]	ND	Two phase I/II peptide vaccination trials, including 7 MM patients, with three showing clinical response [37, 38]
DKK1	Inhibitor of osteoblast differentiation [39]	Almost all patients [40]	Placenta, prostate and testis [40, 41]	Yes [42, 43]	Yes [40, 44]	Yes [44]	ND
HM1.24	Antiviral restriction factor [45]	100% [46]	Terminally differentiated B-cells* [46]	Yes [47–49]	Yes [50–52]	ND	ND

*The expression of HM1.24 in normal tissue needs to be further investigated.
ND: No data available.