CHARACTERIZING SPECIFIC ROLES OF VAV FAMILY MEMBERS IN MELANOMA

AYLÉN ÁVILA; LUCIANO ANSELMINO; NAHUEL CESATTI LALUCE; MACARENA MAMBERTO; XOSÉ R. BUSTELO; MAURICIO MENACHO MÁRQUEZ

Mar del Plata

Congreso; REUNIÓN CONJUNTA SAIC SAI&FAIC SAFIS 2022; 2022

Vav proteins are Rho guanine nucleotide exchange factors that play essential roles in different physiological and pathological processes. This three member family normally shows functional redundancy and is associated with proactive functions in cancer. Nevertheless, the role of these proteins in melanoma was poorly explored.Our goal was to characterize by bioinformatic approaches processes differentially regulated by each member of this family of proteins in melanoma.All the ‘packages’ were used in R. The gene expression data of skin cutaneous melanoma patients was obtained by ‘TCGABiolinks’ from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We divided patients according to Vav1, Vav2 and Vav3 expression and survival plots were constructed using the Kaplan-Meier estimator. High levels of Vav2 were associated with a worst prognosis (p=0.037) while Vav1 and Vav3 correlated with patient survival (p=0.0056 and 0.00011 respectively). Differentially expressed genes between the groups were considered for |FC|>1.5 and FDR