Metastatic disease is the primary cause of death in cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) patients. To understand the mechanisms of CMM metastasis and identify potential predictive markers, we analyzed gene-expression profiles of 34 vertical growth phase melanoma cases using cDNA microarrays. All patients had a minimum follow-up of 36 months. Twenty-one cases developed nodal metastatic disease and...

Expression of the tyrosine kinase receptor, c-KIT, progressively decreases during local tumor growth and invasion of human melanomas. We have previously shown that enforced c-KIT expression in highly metastatic cells inhibited tumor growth and metastasis in nude mice. Furthermore, the ligand for c-KIT, SCF, induces apoptosis in human melanoma cells expressing c-KIT under both in vitro and in vi...

Laminin is a large multidomain protein with diverse biological activities. We previously demonstrated that intact laminin as well as an A chain synthetic peptide (LamA2091-2108) stimulate tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA)-catalyzed plasminogen activation. Here we report that LamA2091-2108 increases t-PA production by the highly metastatic murine melanoma cell line B16F10, with no effect on th...

Proteinase-activated receptor 2 (PAR-2) is a ubiquitous surface molecule. It belongs to the family of G protein-coupled receptors activated by site-specific proteolysis by trypsin. Altered function of PAR-2 has been described in different malignant tumours, both in vivo and in vitro. In the present study, we investigated differences of metastatic spread of B16 melanoma in knock-out animals comp...

Melanoma is the most aggressive type of skin cancer and one of the most frequent tumours in young adults. Identification of primary tumours prone to develop metastasis is of paramount importance for further patient stratification. However, till today, no markers exist that are routinely used to predict melanoma progression. To ameliorate this problem, we generated antiserum directed against met...

AIM In this review, we outline similarities between conjunctival and skin melanoma as well as the effectiveness of combined BRAF/MEK inhibition in melanoma, and discuss the applicability of these agents in conjunctival melanoma. METHODS The study provides a PubMed literature review. RESULTS Conjunctival melanoma and skin melanoma are genetically and phenotypically related. Both tumors typic...

Melanoma is a malignant tumor and one of the most frequent metastatic cancers. This study was conducted to identify differential expression genes (DEGs) and single nucleotide variations (SNVs) in metastatic melanoma. We analyzed microarray data of GSE23056 downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus, including two normal samples (skinN1 and skinN2) and 2 metastatic melanoma samples (skinT and l...

BACKGROUND Management of metastatic melanoma is changing rapidly following the introduction of innovative effective therapies, with consequences for the allocation of healthcare resources. The objective of this study was to assess hospitalisation costs of metastatic melanoma in France from 2011 to 2013 from the perspective of the government payer. METHODS The population studied corresponded t...

Metastatic melanoma has long been considered to have a very poor prognosis and to be chemo-resistant. However, a subgroup of patients with metastatic melanoma presents remarkable responses to chemotherapeutic agents, even in the absence of a response to modern targeted therapies and immunotherapies; accordingly, determining predictive biomarkers of the response to chemotherapies for metastatic ...