engleski

Expression of the nm23-H1 gene and loss of heterozygosity in malignant melanoma

Nm23-H1 is metastasis suppressor gene that encodes nucleoside diphosphate kinase (NDPK) which plays an important role in metastasis formation of human tumors. In order to investigate its role in the progression of the malignant melanoma we analyzed 51 primary malignant melanoma and eleven melanoma metastases according to the expression level of nm23-H1 and loss of heterozygosity. Nm23-H1 gene instability of 51 melanoma samples compared with normal tissue samples analysed by PCR loss of heterozygosity assay using specific oligonucleotide primers.Thirty three (64, 7%) informative samples were found, among them ten (30, 3%) showed LOH regardless of the Clark and Breslow stage of the malignant melanoma. Ten nm23-H1 protein immunoreactivity was positive in 45 (88, 2%)malignant melanoma samples but no statistically significant correlations between the nm23-H1 expression and Clark's and Breslow's stage were found. In this study eleven primary malignant melanoma showed metastasis. One patient was not informative (homozygous), five patients showed the same fragment length (noLOH) in primary and metastatic malignant cells with the same nm23-H1 expression. In two cases primary tumors turned from noLOH into LOH in metastatic tumors and this was followed by a decrease in the nm23-H1 expression. An association between tumor stage according to Clark and Breslow and nm23-H1 protein levels as well as LOH have not been found in malignant melanoma.

nm23-H1; malignant melanoma

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