Human melanoma cell lines secretome analysis

The imbalance of cellular homeostasis during oncogenesis together with the high heterogeneity of tumor-associated stromal cells have a marked effect on the repertoire of the proteins secreted by malignant cells (the secretome). Hence, the study of tumoral secretomes provides insights for understanding the cross-talk between cells within the tumor microenvironment as well as the key effectors for the establishment of the pre-metastatic niche in distant tumor sites. In this context, we performed a proteomic analysis of the secretomes derived from four cell lines: (i) a paired set of fibroblasts - Hs 895. T, a cell line obtained from a lung node metastatic site from a patient who had melanoma and Hs 895.Sk, a skin fibroblast cell line (derived from the same patient); (ii) two malignant metastatic melanoma cell lines - A375, a malignant melanoma cell line from primary source and SH-4, a cell line derived from pleural effusion of a patient with metastatic melanoma. Clustering of expression profiles together with functional enrichment revealed patterns that mirrored each cell type (skin fibroblasts, cancer-associated fibroblasts and metastatic cells). These patterns might be the result of cell-specific protein expression programs and may serve as basis for further proteomic analysis of melanoma cell lines secretomes.