Project description:The imbalance of cellular homeostasis during oncogenesis together with the high heterogeneity of tumor-associated stromal cells have a marked effect on the repertoire of the proteins secreted by malignant cells (the secretome). Hence, the study of tumoral secretomes provides insights for understanding the cross-talk between cells within the tumor microenvironment as well as the key effectors for the establishment of the pre-metastatic niche in distant tumor sites. In this context, we performed a proteomic analysis of the secretomes derived from four cell lines: (i) a paired set of fibroblasts - Hs 895. T, a cell line obtained from a lung node metastatic site from a patient who had melanoma and Hs 895.Sk, a skin fibroblast cell line (derived from the same patient); (ii) two malignant metastatic melanoma cell lines - A375, a malignant melanoma cell line from primary source and SH-4, a cell line derived from pleural effusion of a patient with metastatic melanoma. Clustering of expression profiles together with functional enrichment revealed patterns that mirrored each cell type (skin fibroblasts, cancer-associated fibroblasts and metastatic cells). These patterns might be the result of cell-specific protein expression programs and may serve as basis for further proteomic analysis of melanoma cell lines secretomes.
Project description:A previous case study described an adrenal incidentaloma initially misdiagnosed as adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) and treated with mitotane. The final diagnosis was metastatic melanoma of unknown primary origin. However, the patient developed rapid disease progression after mitotane withdrawal, suggesting a protective role for mitotane in a non-adrenal derived tumour. The aim of the present study was to determine the biological response of primary melanoma cells obtained from that patient and in two other established melanoma and ACC cell lines treated with mitotane. Although mitotane inhibited proliferation of both ACC and melanoma cells, its role in melanoma treatment appears to be limited. Flow cytometry analysis and transcriptomic studies indicated that the ACC cell line was highly responsive to mitotane treatment, although the primary melanoma cell line showed a moderate response in vitro. Mitotane modified activity in several key biological processes, including “mitotic nuclear division”, “DNA repair”, “angiogenesis”, and “negative regulation of ERK1 and ERK2 cascade”.
Project description:Melanoma is one of the most aggressive malignancies. It is the second most common tumor in patients at the ages of 20-35 with increased prevalence in western countries. Patient prognosis largely depends on the tumor stage upon diagnosis, which is determined based on the depth of the primary tumor, ulceration and metastases. To date, only a few studies profiled melanoma proteomes. Here we assembled a panel of nine cell lines, including two melanocyte cultures, two cell lines originating from primary tumors, and five cell lines from metastatic lesions. We identified in total more than 9,000 proteins, and identified the processes that change during melanoma progression.