The treatment for melanoma is challenging because of its nature of being refractory particularly in metastatic stages. Treatment options include surgical resection of the lesion, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy. Immunotherapy such as anti-cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4 and anti-programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) are increasingly being used in the treatment of metastatic...

Melanoma incidence is increasing worldwide, and metastatic melanoma is almost completely resistant to every known therapy. New approaches to treating melanoma are urgently needed, and a greater understanding of the biology of melanoma invasion and metastasis will aid in their creation. A high proportion of invasive melanomas have a constitutively active Raf/mitogen-activated protein kinase/extr...

Noninvasive or minimally invasive prediction of tumor metastatic potential would facilitate individualized cancer management. Studies were performed on a panel of human melanoma xenografts that spanned the full range of metastatic potential measured by an in vivo lung colony assay and an in vitro membrane invasion culture system. Three imaging methods potentially transferable to the clinic [dyn...

Patients with advanced metastatic melanoma have poor prognosis and the genetics underlying its pathogenesis are poorly understood. High-throughput sequencing has allowed comprehensive discovery of somatic mutations in cancer samples. Here, on analysis of our whole-genome and whole-exome sequencing data of 29 melanoma samples, we identified several genes that harbor recurrent nonsynonymous mutat...

Melanoma is one of the most malignant forms of skin cancer; with a rapidly increasing prevalence. Early-stage melanoma is curable, but advanced metastatic melanoma is almost always fatal, and patients with such advanced disease have short median survival. Surgery and radiotherapy play a limited role in the treatment of metastatic melanoma. Rather, chemotherapy remains the mainstay of treatment,...

Human melanoma contains multipotent stem cells that express the neural crest stem cell marker CD271. CD271-expressing melanoma cells in murine xenografts give rise to metastatic tumor. However, a comprehensive clinical investigation of its role in different stages of melanomagenesis has not been well studied. We studied CD271 expression with immunohistochemistry in 11 cases of banal melanocytic...

Background: P53 tumor suppressor gene mutation is one of the most common genetic alterations in human malignancies. The mutated from of the gene is stable and can be detected with immunohistochemistry methods. There is much controversy about the expression rate of this gene in malignant melanoma. Objective: To determine the frequency of the P53 antigen expression by sex, age, type and thickness...

The authors analyzed butyrylcholinesterase status in melanocytic pathology and possible association of enzyme activity with melanoma diagnose and progression. Butyrylcholinesterase activity showed no changes between melanoma and dysplastic nevi, between melanoma and control, between nevi and control, but it had a statistically significant variation between primary and metastatic melanoma. Butyr...

It is well recognized that nitric oxide (NO) is involved in tumor progression, including melanoma. Measurement of proliferative and metastatic capacity by MTS and Matrigel invasion assays, respectively, was done and showed that NO-treated melanoma cells exhibited a higher capacity compared with control, especially metastatic Lu1205 cells. Apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease-1/redox factor-1 (APE...

The metastatic spread of tumor cells occurs through a complex series of events, one of which involves the adhesion of tumor cells to extracellular matrix (ECM) components. Multiple interactions between cell surface receptors of an adherent tumor cell and the surrounding ECM contribute to cell motility and invasion. The current studies evaluate the role of a cell surface chondroitin sulfate prot...