Reactive Oxygen Species in the biology of Melanoma

IBAÑEZ I; NOTCOVICH C; POLICASTRO L; DURAN H

Melanoma / Book 1

InTech

Año: 2011; p. 1 - 30

.The incidence of melanoma has been increasing at an alarming rate worldwide. Althoughmelanoma accounts for only 10% of skin cancer, it is responsible for at least 80% of skincancer deaths. Malignant melanoma remains one of the cancers most resistant to treatment.Moreover, no effective therapy exists to inhibit the metastatic spread of this type of cancer.Research to further understanding of how melanoma cells differ from normal tissues isessential to make the discovery of potential new ways of attack. Increased reactive oxygenspecies (ROS) levels have been associated with numerous pathological conditions, includingcancer. Particularly, melanoma cells constituvely produce high amounts of ROS ascompared with their non-tumoural counterpart, melanocytes (Policastro et al, 2009). Inrelation to this, one promising strategy relates to the development of new therapies takingadvantage of the excess of ROS produced by melanomas. In this chapter, we review: ourcurrent understanding of the involvement of ROS in cancer and particularly in the biologyof melanocytes and melanoma, therapeutic approaches related to intracellular ROSmodulation and emerging gene therapy strategies based on intracellular ROS levels ofmelanoma.