Melanoma Peptide Sequences

Cutaneous melanoma is a malignant tumor of pigmented cells in the skin. These cells, called melanocytes, produce pigment melanin, which is responsible for the color of our skin. Melanoma is the most invasive skin cancer. Although more than 95% of melanoma occurs in the skin, it can also be found in the mucosa of the mouth, nose, anus and vagina, and to a lesser extent in the intestine, melanocytes also exist in the conjunctiva, retina and meninges. There is a 100-fold difference in morbidity among countries around the world, but in the past few decades, the incidence has risen sharply in many populations dominated by fair skin. As a result, more than 80% of the estimated new cases occur in Oceania, Europe and North America. Melanoma is a malignant tumor that occurs in melanocytes and is the deadliest of all skin cancers. Although melanoma accounts for only 4% of all cases of skin cancer, it is the leading cause of death from skin cancer. Several antigens expressed in melanoma cells and recognized by T cells have been identified and used to develop immune methods for tumor regression. These include Mart-1/Melan-A, gp100, Tyrosinase, p15, Trp-1 and β-catenin.

Development of Melanoma Research

In the past few years, an important development has been the identification of a variety of melanoma-associated antigens that contain a large number of CTL-recognized epitopes. These tumor antigens can be divided into three categories:

• Tumor testicular antigen (MAGE, Bage, GAGE, NY-ESO-1)
• Melanocyte differentiation antigen (tyrosinase, Melan-A/Mart-1, gp100,).
• Mutated or abnormally expressed antigens (mM-1, cdk4, β-catenin, gp100-in4, p15 and n-acetylglucosaminyltransferase V)

The occurrence of mutant melanoma-associated antigens, resulting in the production of unique antigenic determinants, is not a rare event. These antigens usually exist in primary tumors and play an important role in the occurrence and development of tumors. Therefore, they are of great significance not only for immunotherapy, but also for understanding the molecular mechanism of malignant transformation of tumors. It is speculated that, in many cases, oncogenes mutate and cell cycle.

Conclusion

Although melanoma can be cured surgically at an early stage, recurrent or metastatic melanoma is often resistant to traditional treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy, and the prognosis of advanced melanoma is fatal in most cases. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop new treatments to treat the disease.

References

1. Pritchard, A. L., Burel, J. G., Neller, M. A., Hayward, N. K., Lopez, J. A., Fatho, M., ... & Schmidt, C. W. (2015). Exome sequencing to predict neoantigens in melanoma. Cancer immunology research, 3(9), 992-998.
2. Welinder, C., Pawłowski, K., Sugihara, Y., Yakovleva, M., Jönsson, G., Ingvar, C., ... & Jansson, B. (2015). A protein deep sequencing evaluation of metastatic melanoma tissues. PloS one, 10(4), e0123661.