Characterizing the Role of Vav2 in Melanoma

MACARENA MAMBERTO; YASMIN COMPARETTI; JULIÁN GUERCETTI; CARLA BORINI ETICHETTI; FLORENCIA MALIZIA; MAURICIO MENACHO MÁRQUEZ

Congreso; Reunión Anual de Sociedades de Biociencia 2019; 2019

Skin cancer is one of the most common of all human cancers. The most dangerous form of this type of cancer is melanoma, which is associated with an increasing incidence in the population.Vav proteins are guanosine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) of the Rho GTPase family. As GEFs, they modulate processes highly associated to the development of cancer and metastasis, mostly through their GTPase regulatory function, but their involvement in melanoma is yet to be elucidated.In our work we explored the role of Vav2, a member of Vav family proteins, in events associated to melanoma development. By shRNA techniques and the use of mammalian expression vectors, we were able to modulate Vav2 expression in the mouse derived melanoma cell line B16-F0. By MTT and cell-counting based methods we observed that decreased levels of Vav2 lead to proliferation defects (p