Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, yet to the average person it cannot be distinguished from an innocent skin tag or other sometimes ugly blemish on the skin. As a result, patients don't bother to show it to their doctors. It can metastasize (spread). It is deadly and responsible for 79% of skin-cancer related deaths.
Western University scientists in London, Ontario, have identified a protein called Pannexin (Panx1). It appears in normal levels on the surface of healthy skin cells, but with melanoma it is over-produced to a pathological level.
Silvia Penuela and Dale Laird are the researchers behind this discovery. They say that if the level of Panx 1 is reduced, the afflicted cell becomes more normal.
"We think this over-production of Panx 1 enables the melanoma to become very aggressive. The cells have these extra Panx 1 channels and they can leave the primary tumor and invade other tissues," explains Laird, a professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology and Canada Research Chair in Gap Junctions and Disease. "And when you find a protein that is highly up-regulated in a disease cell such as melanoma, the question becomes, is there therapeutic value in targeting a drug to that protein to reduce its production or block its function? Would that be an effective treatment?"
They now plan to correlate their discovery to patient samples using the human melanoma bank through the collaboration with Dr. Muriel Brackstone and other clinicians at the London Health Sciences Centre, to see if this is a cancer marker. "If a melanoma lesion has a lot of this protein, it might be a tool for prognosis. And because it is on the skin, it would be more accessible for treatment." And treatment might be something as simple as a cream to use on melanoma lesions.
This research will be published in the Aug. 17 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
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