Parkinson's Disease-Related Protein, α-Synuclein, in Malignant Melanoma

PLoS One

Tetsu Kamitani¹  Yasuhiro Matsuo¹ 

[1] Department of Medicine, Center for Molecular Chaperone/Radiobiology and Cancer Virology, Cancer Center, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, Georgia, United States of America

关键词: Melanomas;    Immunostaining;    Melanoma cells;    Pigments;    Melanin;    Squamous cell carcinomas;    Basal cell carcinomas;    Cancer detection and diagnosis;   

DOI  :  10.1371/journal.pone.0010481

学科分类：医学（综合）

来源: Public Library of Science

【 摘 要 】

Background Melanoma is the major cause of skin cancer death worldwide. Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that is caused by mutation of α-synuclein or other genes. Importantly, epidemiological studies have reported co-occurrence of melanoma and Parkinson's disease, suggesting that these two diseases could share common genetic components.Methodology/Principal Findings Recently, we found that human melanoma cell lines highly express α-synuclein, whereas the protein is undetectable in the non-melanoma cancer cell lines tested. To investigate the expression of α-synuclein in human melanoma tissues, we immunostained sections of melanoma, nevus, non-melanocytic cutaneous carcinoma, and normal skin. α-Synuclein was positively detected in 86% of the primary and 85% of the metastatic melanoma sections, as well as in 89% of nevus sections. However, α-synuclein was undetectable in non-melanocytic cutaneous carcinoma and normal skin.Conclusions/Significance The Parkinson's disease-related protein, α-synuclein, is expressed in both malignant and benign melanocytic lesions, such as melanomas and nevi. Although α-synuclein cannot be used to distinguish between malignant and benign melanocytic skin lesions, it might be a useful biomarker for the diagnosis of metastatic melanoma.

【 授权许可】

CC BY