Standard melanoma-associated markers do not identify the MM127 metastatic melanoma cell line.

Parvathi Haridas,D L Sean Mcelwain,Matthew J Simpson,Abhishek S Kashyap,Jacqui A Mcgovern

doi:10.1038/srep24569

Abstract

Reliable identification of different melanoma cell lines is important for many aspects of melanoma research. Common markers used to identify melanoma cell lines include: S100; HMB-45; and Melan-A. We explore the expression of these three markers in four different melanoma cell lines: WM35; WM793; SK-MEL-28; and MM127. The expression of these markers is examined at both the mRNA and protein level. Our results show that the metastatic cell line, MM127, cannot be detected using any of the commonly used melanoma-associated markers. This implies that it would be very difficult to identify this particular cell line in a heterogeneous sample, and as a result this cell line should be used with care.

Highlights

Reliable identification of different melanoma cell lines is important for many aspects of melanoma research
The results from this analysis confirm that WM35, WM793 and SK-MEL-28 are as expected (Supplementary information)
Discrepancies in protein expression among individual melanoma cells have been previously reported[17], and this is consistent with the results presented here, since some individual WM793 cells are positive for HMB-45 [Fig. 1(b)] while other individual WM793 cells are negative for HMB-45

Summary

Introduction

Reliable identification of different melanoma cell lines is important for many aspects of melanoma research. A common feature of many experimental investigations is that some melanoma cell lines are unable to be detected using certain markers[7] To address this limitation, many studies use two different markers to ensure reliable identification[8]. In this previous study we describe results from an in vitro monoculture circular barrier assay[14,15], and we use a discrete random walk mathematical model to quantify the rates of cell migration and cell proliferation in the experiment Because this previous study involves a monoculture assay with just one cell type present, we did not attempt to identify the MM127 cells using any melanoma-associated markers. The focus of the present study is to explore whether MM127 cells can be reliably identified using standard approaches

Methods

Results

Conclusion