Human melanoma transcriptom is modulated by cold plasma treatment

Treatment of tumor progression and metastasis continues to be of major importance in the field of cancer. It is reported that cancer cells often show a pronounced sensitivity towards oxidative stress. Cold plasma offers the ability to deliver a delicate mix of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species directly into cells or tissues. Using a well-described argon plasma jet, we investigated the biological responses of plasma on tumor cell death, cell migration, and expression of adhesion-associated genes as well as cytoskeletal modifications. Using the human melanoma cancer cell line SK-Mel-147 we were able to show that plasma induced only little apoptosis but had profound effects on tumor cell motility. Plasma treatment of cells was associated with an inhibition of migration and disorganization of the actin cytoskeleton which were mediated through multiple signaling pathways, as transcriptome-wide gene analysis suggested. Specifically, changes in cell adhesion were regulated by differential expression of cell junction and cell-matrix proteins. These results provide evidence that plasma may be able to disturb the migration and adhesion in metastatic SK-Mel-147 cells. Microarrays were used to analyze and investigate the biological effects of cold plasma on human melanoma cell line SK-Mel-147. Using an argon plasma jet kinpen, regulated transcripts were analyzed and further described in Schmidt et al. (2015): “Human melanoma cell migration and adhesion is decreased by cold plasma treatment”. A study using total RNA recovered from human SK-Mel-147, treated with cold plasma as well as H2O2-treated and untreated SK-Mel-147 controls.