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Background: Metastatic melanoma requires early detection, being treatment resistant. However, the earliest events of melanoma metastasis, and especially of dermal invasion, remain ill defined.Results and Methods: Gene expression profiles of two clonal subpopulations, selected from the same human melanoma cell line, but differing in ability to cross the dermal-epidermal junction in skin reconstructs, were compared by oligonucleotide microarray. Of 26 496 cDNA probes, 461 were differentially expressed (>2-fold; P< 0.001), only 71 genes being upregulated in invasive cells. Among them, TSPAN8, a tetraspanin not yet described in melanoma, was upregulated at mRNA and protein levels in melanoma cells from the invasive clone, as assessed by RT-PCR, flow cytometry and western blot analysis. Interestingly, TSPAN8 was the only tetraspanin in which overexpression correlated with invasive phenotype. Flow cytometry of well-defined melanoma cell lines confirmed that TSPAN8 was exclusively expressed by invasive, but not non-invasive melanoma cells or normal melanocytes. Immunohistochemistry revealed that TSPAN8 was expressed by melanoma cells in primary melanomas and metastases, but not epidermal cells in healthy skin. The functional role of TSPAN8 was demonstrated by silencing endogenous TSPAN8 with siRNA, reducing invasive outgrowth from tumour spheroids within matrigel without affecting cell proliferation or survival.Conclusion: TSPAN8 expression may enable melanoma cells to cross the cutaneous basement membrane, leading to dermal invasion and progression to metastasis. TSPAN8 could be a promising target in early detection and treatment of melanoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The CD9 antigen, a major platelet glycoprotein, is a member of the tetraspan superfamily. We show that treatment of K562 cells with 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) which induces megakaryocytic differentiation, leads to a seven-fold increase in CD9 expression, which becomes associated with the integrin beta1, suggesting that it is functionally relevant. The upregulation of CD9 expression precedes the appearance of the megakaryocytic-specific marker GPIIb (CD41) as well as integrins beta3 (GPIIIa/CD61), alpha v (CD51) and VLA-2 (CD49b). Both GPIIb/IIIa expression and CD9 upregulation are dependent on protein kinase C (PKC) activation since they are blocked by the specific inhibitor GF109203X. Steady-state levels of CD9 and GPIIb mRNA were also measured by quantitative RT-PCR. Both messengers were detected on resting cells and were shown to accumulate during TPA treatment. However, the increase of the CD9 mRNA was detected much earlier than the increase of GPIIb mRNA (1-2 h vs 24-48 h). Using different constructs of the 5'-flanking domain of the CD9 gene cloned ahead of the CAT reporter gene, we could demonstrate that a responsive element was located in a 52 bp fragment of the promoter of the CD9 gene. Altogether, these data suggest that CD9 upregulation in the megakaryocytic lineage could occur at early stages of differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]