EXPLORING THE ROLE OF GAMMA-SYNUCLEIN IN MELANOMA

ZANOTTI, LUCÍA; MALIZIA, FLORENCIA; ANSELMINO, LUCIANO; MENACHO MÁRQUEZ, MAURICIO

Mar del Plata

Congreso; LXIV Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Clínica (SAIC); 2019

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Clínica

Cancer is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Inparticular, malignant melanoma is the most lethal form of skin cancer, withincidence indexes increasing over the years.Synucleins are small proteins expressed primarily in neural tissue and in certaintumors. Gamma-synuclein (γS) is detected in a wide range of cancer types,including breast and ovarian cancer, but to date there are no rigorous studies toaddress the role this protein could have in progression of melanoma.Our goal was to analyze if γS was related to melanoma development. First, bybioinformatics we observed that γS was expressed in melanoma samples, andwe confirmed that result by Western Blot (WB) and immunocytochemistry (ICC)studies in melanoma cell lines. WB analysis revealed that γS was expressed asdifferent molecular weight species, and by sequential lysis with detergents wecould detect that high molecular weight species were present at the cytoplasm ofmelanoma cells, while monomeric γS was mostly present at the nucleus.By shRNA techniques and the use of expression vectors, we were able tomodulate γS expression in B16-F0 (mouse) and A375 (human) melanoma cells.MTT-based proliferation studies revealed that γS expression was not significantlyaffecting melanoma cells growth (P>0.05). Nevertheless, by fluorescent F-actinstaining we observed that increased expression of γS was associated with majorcytoskeletal changes. Indeed, by wound healing assays we noted that reducedexpression of γS promoted a migratory defect of B16 melanoma cells (P