Peptide epitopes in breast cancer mucins

Abstract

Major advances have occured in the structural analysis of mucins found in breast cancer following the isolation of cDNAs and the gene for MUC1 - which is the predominant mucin expressed in breast cancer1-4. In addition, other genes coding for mucins have been identified which are expressed in a variety of tissues, and are also found in breast tissue and to a lesser extent in breast cancer (particularly MUC2 and MUC3)5, 6 It was of interest that these genes were isolated using polyclonal antibodies and bacterial expression libraries, indicating that the active antibodies were detecting a non-glycosylated linear peptide, and this prediction was proven by the finding that many existing anti-MUC..