. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Aug 1.

Published in final edited form as: Curr Opin Immunol. 2017 Jul 19;47:57–63. doi: 10.1016/j.coi.2017.07.003

Table 2.

Types of tumor antigens for T cells

TAg Type	Pros	Cons	Examples
A. Products of oncogenic viruses	High immunogenicity (no tolerance)	The target tumors are limited	EBV, HBV, HPV
B. Developmental or germ cell products	Lower risk of recognizing self- antigens in normal tissue (low tolerance) TAgs can be pharmacologically induced in tumor cells	Possibility of adverse effects to reproductive organs???	Tumor-testis antigens (MAGE-A3, NY- ESO1)
C. Tissue-specific differentiation antigens	High specificity, lower risk of off- target effects	The target tumors are limited, possibility of adverse effects to normal tissues Low immunogenicity (tolerance)	Melanosomal proteins (gp100, Trp1, Melan- A/Mart-1), prostatic proteins (PSA, PAP)
D. Products of genetic alterations derived from malignant transformation	High immunogenicity	The identification of neoepitopes in each individual (i.e. expensive and complicated)	a) Overexpressed gene products (HER2/NEU, CEA b) Mutation-derived epitopes (P53, Ras, EGFRvIII, BCR-ABL, point mutations/neoepitopes)