Although most cases are cured by excision with clear margins, primary cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) may metastasize in up to 5% of cases and accounts for up to 10,000 deaths in the United States each year, a mortality rate similar to that of melanoma (Housman et al., 2003, Karia et al., 2013). At present, there are limited and relatively inefficacious options for treatment of metastatic SCC and no biomarkers for predicting eventual clinical outcome of localized disease. Identification and development of biomarkers for predicting disease progression, along with identification of tumor-specific antigens as therapeutic targets, would enhance our ability to treat advanced SCC effectively.

MAGEA3 is known to be expressed in a subset of a wide range of malignancies, including melanoma and SCC of the head and neck (Cheng et al., 2009, Cuffel et al., 2011, Ladelfa et al., 2012, Shantha Kumara et al., 2012). In many tumor types MAGEA3 expression has been shown to correlate with poor clinical outcome (Esfandiary and Ghafouri-Fard, 2015). However, the expression of MAGEA3 in primary cutaneous SCC has not been previously reported.