Sperm-associated antigens and tumor

Cancer-testis antigen (CTA) is a kind of important tumor marker antigen.Due to its expression specificity and harmless to either normal or germ cells when playing antitumor immune effects, it has great potential to be used in cancer immunotherapy.As a novel cancer-testis antigen, the role of sperm-associated antigens (SPAGs) has become a research hotspot.SPAGs are mainly expressed in sperm cells, however, recent studies showed that in some tumor tissues the expression of SPAGs could be detected at different level.This paper mainly summarizes the biological characteristics of several SPAGs that have been studied in-depth, and its impact on biological characteristics of tumor, such as pathological staging, proliferation, invasion, and metastasis.Due to its specific expression in tumor tissues, as well as the ability to elicit immune response, SPAGs will be an ideal target for early diagnosis and immunotherapy of cancer.