| Carcinoma is one of the most popular diseases threathening human being's healths. Although there are many methods such as surgical resection chemotherapy radiation therapy for us to choose, yet these modalities do not yield good results, especially against advanced carcinomas.Anti-cancer vaccination is based on the existence of antigens, selectively or preferentially expressed by tumors, called tumor-associated antigens (TAAs). Cancer eradication using TAA vaccination has been demonstrated in numerous animal models. Vaccination with peptides derived from TAAs to stimulate specific T cells has being a practicable approach evaluated in clinical trials. It may be clinically beneficial if we have as many antigens as possible.A gene of small GTPase, Ran, which controls the cell cycle through the regulation of nucleo- cytoplasmic transport, mitotic spindle organization, and nuclear envelope formation is mainly located in cell nucleus, Because of its increased expression in cancer cells and involvement in malignant transformation and/or the enhanced proliferation of cancer cells These characters make us believe Ran antigen do have some connection with the generation of tumor. Recently Ran was identified as a gene that codes for tumor-associated antigen (TAA) by Azuma K et al. They showed that Ran antigen is expressed in the majority of cancer cells and is also expressed in most normal tissues at mRNA levels but only detected in tumors at protein level and demonstrated that the two Ran-derived peptides were capable of inducing HLA-A33–restricted CTL activity reactive to tumor cells in epithelial cancer patients. HLA-A*0201-expressing individuals cover >50% in the population of China. On the other hand, HLA-A*0201 is the most common HLA-A allele in Asian populations,...
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