Melanoma Antigen Family C2 (MAGEC2)

MAGEC2 encodes a deduced 373-amino acid protein that shares 56% homology with MAGEC1. RT-PCR analysis of normal and tumor tissues showed expression in testis and in 20 to 30% of various human cancers.MAGEC2 was frequently expressed in seminomas, melanomas, and bladder transitional cell carcinomas. It was also expressed in a significant fraction of head and neck carcinomas, breast carcinomas, nonsmall-cell lung carcinomas, and sarcomas.No protein was shown in normal tissues except germ cells in testis and Purkinje cells in cerebellum. In HCC specimens, the protein was expressed in either cytoplasm or nucleus in 37.1% (26 of 70) of samples. There appeared to be a correlation between the tumor differentiation of HCC and HCA587 protein expression, i.e., the lower the differentiation, the higher percentage of expression.