Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: EC:3.4.24.23 (MMP)
 4,246 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Metastatic melanoma remains the deadliest of all skin cancers with a survival rate at five years of less than 15%. MT1-MMP is a membrane-associated matrix metalloproteinase that controls pericellular proteolysis and is an important, invasion-promoting, pro-tumorigenic MMP in cancer. We show that deregulation of MT1-MMP expression happens as early as the transition from nevus to primary melanoma and continues to increase during melanoma progression. Furthermore, MT1-MMP expression is associated with poor melanoma patient outcome, underscoring a pivotal role of MT1-MMP in melanoma pathogenesis. We demonstrate that MT1-MMP is directly required for melanoma cells to metastasize, as cells deprived of MT1-MMP fail to form distant metastasis in an orthotopic mouse melanoma model. We show that MT1-MMP affects cell invasion by activating its target MMP2. Importantly, we demonstrate, for the first time, that activation of MMP2 by MT1-MMP is required to sustain RAC1 activity and promote MT1-MMP-dependent cell motility. These data highlight a novel MT1-MMP/MMP2/RAC1 signaling axis in melanoma that may represent an intriguing molecular target for the treatment of invasive melanoma.
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PMID:MT1-MMP modulates melanoma cell dissemination and metastasis through activation of MMP2 and RAC1. 2438 69

Metastatic melanoma is the deadliest of all skin cancers. Despite progress in diagnostics and treatment of melanoma, the prognosis for metastatic patients remains poor. We previously showed that Membrane-type 1 Matrix Metalloproteinase (MT1-MMP) is one of the drivers of melanoma metastasis. Classically, MT1-MMP regulates a verity of cellular functions including cell-to-cell interaction and cell-to-matrix communication. Recently, MT1-MMP has been found to also modulate gene expression. To specifically assess MT1-MMP dependent gene regulation in melanoma, microarray gene expression analysis was performed in a melanoma cell line whose metastatic properties depend on the activity of MT1-MMP. We identified the tumor suppressor gene SPRY4 as a new transcriptional target of MT1-MMP that is negatively regulated by the protease. Knockdown of MT1-MMP enhances SPRY4 expression at the mRNA and protein level. SPRY4 expression inversely correlates with that of MT1-MMP in melanoma samples and importantly, correlates with melanoma patient survival. SPRY4 modulates MT1-MMP dependent cell migration such that inhibition of SPRY4 rescues cell migration that has been impaired by MT1-MMP knock down. MT1-MMP decreases SPRY4 in part through an MMP2/RAC1 axis we previously show promotes cell motility downstream of MT1-MMP. These results identify the tumor suppressor SPRY4 as a novel molecular effector of MT1-MMP affecting melanoma cell motility.
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PMID:MT1-MMP dependent repression of the tumor suppressor SPRY4 contributes to MT1-MMP driven melanoma cell motility. 2639 17