Lead Inventor:
Paul B. Fisher, Ph.D.
Malignant Melanoma Surgery Sole Treatment Option:
Malignant melanoma is a serious type of skin cancer, due to uncontrolled growth of pigment cells. About 48,000 melanoma related deaths occur worldwide per year. Despite many years of intensive clinical research, the sole effective cure is surgical resection of the primary tumor before it achieves a thickness greater than 1mm.
Gene Therapy for Malignant Melanoma:
This technology exploited the defective differentiation process in melanoma cancer cells, constructed cDNA libraries from undifferentiated, actively proliferating human melanoma cells and terminal differentiated, growth arrested melanoma cells induced by recombinant human fibroblast interferon (IFN-.beta.) and mezerein (MEZ). By random screening of these cDNA libraries, the technology identifies melanoma differentiation associated gene 9 (mda-9), displays differential expression as a function of induction of growth arrest and terminal differentiation, which could be used to monitor the proliferation and differentiation of melanoma cancer cells.
Applications:
• The technology developed a novel differentiation therapy, which uses differentiation agents that force cancer cells to resume the process of maturation with a concomitant loss of growth potential
• The technology identified gene that correlates with and may mediate terminal cell differentiation, representing a novel cancer therapeutic target
• The technology identified gene that defines the molecular basis of terminal cell differentiation, representing a novel diagnostic and screening marker for differentiation therapy
Advantages:
• The differentiation therapy developed by this technology, could efficiently induce terminal differentiation in cancer cells without inducing nonspecific toxicity in normal cells
Patent Status: Patents Issued (US 6,071,696, US 6,548,650, US 7,339,026)
* see links below *
Licensing Status: Available for Licensing
Publications: Boukerche H, Su ZZ, Prevot C, Sarkar D, Fisher PB. mda-9/Syntenin promotes metastasis in human melanoma cells by activating c-Src.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. (2008) 105(41):15914-15819.
Boukerche H, Su ZZ, Emdad L, Sarkar D, Fisher PB. mda-9/Syntenin regulates the metastatic phenotype in human melanoma cells by activating nuclear factor-kappaB.
Cancer Res. (2007) 67(4):1812-1822.
Boukerche H, Su ZZ, Emdad L, Baril P, Balme B, Thomas L, Randolph A, Valerie K, Sarkar D, Fisher PB. mda-9/Syntenin: a positive regulator of melanoma metastasis.
Cancer Res. (2005) 65(23):10901-10911.
Lin JJ, Jiang H, Fisher PB. Melanoma differentiation associated gene-9, mda-9, is a human gamma interferon responsive gene.
Gene (1998) 207(2):105-110.