Cancers expressing hCG/subunits have poor prognosis and adverse survival. Thus, immunological approaches against hCG have applications for control of fertility and for treatment of terminal cancers. Various mechanisms by which hCG exercises its action are discussed. These include

its role as autocrine growth promoter, inhibitor of apoptosis, promotor of angiogenesis, invasiveness, and protection against rejection by the immune system. The article reviews various vaccines developed for control of fertility and for therapy of advanced-stage cancers expressing ectopically hCG/subunits. Also reviewed are the recombinant fully humanized and chimeric antibodies usable RAD001 for emergency contraception, as vacation contraceptive, and as therapeutic antibodies for treatment of cancers. Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is a unique hormone. Its existence was discovered by Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek in 1927.1 They reported that the blood and urine of pregnant women contained a gonad-stimulating substance. On injecting this substance subcutaneously in immature female mice, it led to follicular

maturation, luteinization, and haemorrhage into the ovarian stroma. This procedure became known as the Ascheim Zondek pregnancy test, the very Carfilzomib datasheet first of its kind. hCG is made by a woman soon after conception. Robert Edwards, who got the Nobel Prize in Medicine (for year 2010), and his colleagues were the first to report the presence of hCG in the culture fluid of early embryos from eggs fertilized in-vitro.2 It plays a critical role in implantation

of the embryo onto the uterus. Protein tyrosine phosphatase Marmoset embryos exposed to antibodies against beta subunit of hCG do not implant, whereas the same embryos exposed to normal globulins implant normally.3 A similar role of hCG in implantation of the embryo in humans is provided by the observation that sexually active women of reproductive age immunized with a vaccine generating antibodies against hCG do not become pregnant and their menstrual cycles remain regular without lengthening of the luteal phase.4 For a long time, hCG was believed to be made and secreted in normal healthy women only in pregnancy. Recent observations by Alexander group5 indicate the expression of hCG by human endometrial cells during luteal phase. It is not unlikely that hCG made during this phase of the cycle prepares the endometrium to receive the fertilized egg. An unexpected site of expression of hCG and its subunits (α and β) in men and in non-pregnant women is in a variety of cancers such as lung cancer,6 bladder carcinoma,7 colorectal carcinoma,8 pancreatic carcinoma,9 breast cancer,10 cervical carcinoma,11 oral cancers,12 vulva/vaginal cancers,13 prostate cancer,14 and gastric carcinomas.15 Patients harboring such cancers have poor prognosis and adverse survival.