Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the world. One of the approaches for diagnosis of breast cancer is detection of its tumor-associated markers. Mucin 1 (MUC1), a tumor-associated antigen, is a transmembrane glycoprotein expressed by normal epithelial cells and overexpressed by carcinomas of epithelial origin. Also, human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2/erbB-2) belongs to the one of four members of tyrosin kinase type 1 family in which overexpression of HER2 is associated with malignancy in breast cancer. This study was aimed to bioinformatics analysis and designing a recombinant chimeric protein containing MUC1 and HER2 antigens to express in prokaryotic host (Escherichia coli) as breast cancer diagnosis tools. The immunogenic sequences of MUC1 and HER2 were extracted and fused together by a linker. The chimeric construct was analyzed by bioinformatics softwares. The optimization and purification, evaluation of the expression of chimeric protein was performed using Western blotting, ELISA, and immunohistochemistry. The results showed that the chimeric construct was stable and immunogenic domains were exposed. The pET-28a vector containing chimeric gene had high level of protein expression. The recombinant chimeric protein was confirmed using Western blotting, and it was investigated using ELISA and IHC. Then, the MUC1 and HER2 combined peptides can be used as coating antigens in ELISA for detection of antibodies against MUC1 or HER2 in human serum.