Dacarbazine Increases Melanoma BRO Cell Adhesion to the Extracellular Matrix Components

Melanoma is one of the most dangerous malignant tumors. The number of melanoma cases is increasing especially in light skinned individuals. Fast metastasis development can play an important role in in the ineffectiveness of antitumor therapy and be a main reason of poor prognosis for patients with melanoma. Signals associated with extracellular matrix play an important role in metastasis formation. Dacarbazine is used for melanoma monotherapy, but the effectivity is less than 5% in patients with metastatic melanoma. The aim of this work is to assess the alterations in expression levels of extracellular matrix (ECM) components and associated factors after dacarbazine treatment. The authors found that dacarbazine treatment increased the expression levels of such ECM components as collagen type IV, fibronectin, laminin, and vitronectin, whereas tenascin expression level was decreased. In addition, expression levels of HIPK1 and RBL1 were also increased, while expression level of integrin ITGB8 decreased. These alterations are supposed to be connected with epigenic regulation of gene expression by alkylating agent dacarbazine and associated with the promotion of cancer progression and metastasis.