bFGF is the putative natural growth factor for human melanocytes

Abstract

Normal human melanocytes, unlike pigment cells from metastatic melanomas, do not survive in culture in routine, serum-supplemented media. The search for natural growth factors for melanocytes has shown that mitogenic activity is ubiquitous in several tissues and in melanomas. Of several known growth factors tested, basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) was the only one mitogenic for melanocytes but only in the presence of cyclic-adenosine-monophosphate (cAMP) stimulators. The mitogenic activity toward melanocytes in tissues and melanoma cell extracts had high affinity for heparin and antibodies to bFGF synthetic peptides. These results suggest that one of the growth factors for melanocytes might be bFGF or a bFGF-like polypeptide and that autocrine production of bFGF-like molecules by melanoma cells may contribute to the malignant phenotype of melanocytes. Because acidic FGF (aFGF) did not stimulate growth, the receptors for bFGF on melanocytes might be significantly different from those for a FGF.

Suppression of autocrine cell proliferation and tumorigenesis of human melanoma cells and fibroblast growth factor transformed fibroblasts by a kinase-deficient FGF receptor 1: evidence for the involvement of Src-family kinases

“…The autocrine growth of melanoma cells is conferred, at least in part, by ectopic expression of growth factors (Balentien et al, 1991;Easty et al, 1995;Halaban, 1992). Of all the melanocyte growth factors listed above, bFGF (basic FGF) plays the most decisive role in the progression of normal human melanocytes to melanomas (Becker et al, 1989(Becker et al, , 1992Halaban et al, 1987Halaban et al, , 1988Halaban et al, , 1991. The abnormal expression of bFGF/FGF2 is detected already in melanocytes in atypical nevi in situ (Albino et al, 1991;Reed et al, 1994;Scott et al, 1991), and has been observed in all melanoma cell lines tested.…”

FGFR4 Arg388 allele correlates with tumour thickness and FGFR4 protein expression with survival of melanoma patients

“…Especially in combination with ultraviolet radiation, bFGF has been shown to act as a potent inductor of melanoma (Berking et al, 2001). In contrast to melanocytes, bFGF can be produced by nevus and melanoma cells and may act as an autocrine growth factor through the FGF receptors (Halaban et al, 1987;Halaban et al, 1988c;Albino et al, 1991;Scott et al, 1991;Reed et al, 1994;al-Alousi et al, 1996a, b;Meier et al, 2003). It has been demonstrated that melanoma cells cannot survive if bFGF or FGFR1 are targeted (Wang and Becker, 1997;Graeven et al, 2001;Valesky et al, 2002).…”

La pigmentation du poil

“…Un candidat potentiel était FGF2 ou bFGF (basic fibroblast growth factor). FGF2 est un facteur de croissance soluble impliqué dans la prolifé-ration, la différenciation, la survie et le chimiotactisme des mélanocytes [5][6][7][8]. Effectivement, les auteurs montrent que l'expression de FGF2 est plus importante dans les cultures de kératinocytes éta-blies à partir des souris Krt5-Foxn1 que les souris sauvages.…”