NYU Langone Medical Center researchers find micro RNA plays a key role in melanoma ...( NEW YORK CITY (February 5 2009)Scien...)

NEW YORK CITY (February 5, 2009)Scientists have long wondered how melanoma cells travel from primary tumors on the surface of the skin to the brain, liver and lungs, where they become more aggressive, resistant to therapy, and deadly. Now, scientists from NYU Langone Medical Center have identified the possible culprita short strand of RNA called microRNA (miRNA) that is over-expressed in metastatic melanoma cell lines and tissues.

The new findings, published online this week and in the February 10, 2009 print edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), suggest that miRNA silencing to counteract or attack this mechanism may be an effective therapeutic strategy for metastatic melanoma, according to Eva Hernando, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Pathology at NYU School of Medicine, and the lead author of the study. Dr. Hernando is also a member of the NYU Cancer Institute at NYU Langone Medical Center.

The highly aggressive character of melanoma, says Dr. Hernando, makes it an excellent model to probe the mechanisms underlying metastasis, the process by which cancer cells travel from the primary tumor to distant sites in the body. Though other researchers have found that altered miRNAs contribute to breast cancer metastasis, this is the first study to examine the role of miRNA in metastatic melanoma.

"Melanoma becomes deadly after the cells leave the primary tumor through the blood and metastasize in other organs where they are resistant to therapy," says Dr. Hernando, who notes that the average survival for patients after melanoma metastasis occurs is only nine months. "Normal cells are unable to travel and survive in alien locations, so we are very interested in understanding the invasive, adaptive, and resistant traits of the very aggressive melanoma cell." miRNAs are short pieces of RNA that block the expression of proteins that are encoded by
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