Specific amino acid dependency regulates the cellular behavior of melanoma

Relative specific amino acid dependency is one of the metabolic abnormalities of melanoma cells and metabolic studies of this dependency are in their infancy. Herein, we review the current studies in this area and present new information that adds to the understanding of how tyrosine (Tyr) and phenylalanine (Phe) dependency as well as other amino acids regulate the cell behaviors of melanoma cells. Amino acid dependency of human melanoma cells is multifactorial and restricting Tyr and Phe to melanoma triggers a series of alterations in metabolic and signaling pathways in a time-ordered fashion to alter different cellular behaviors. For example, at early time points, the reduction of Tyr and Phe alters metabolic reactions quantitatively or qualitatively. The alterations include modulation of integrin/focal adhesion kinase (FAK)/G protein pathways and the plasminogen activator (PA)/PA inhibitor pathways to inhibit tumor cell invasion. At later time periods, a further drop in intracellular amino acids induces more metabolic alterations to impact the FAK/Ras/Raf and Bcl-2 pathways leading to apoptosis. The threshold effects and the targeting of multiple pathways by restriction of specific amino acids provide a connection between the metabolic alterations and signaling pathways that modulate the cellular behaviors of melanoma cells. Decoding the metabolic alterations that connect amino acid concentration to the crucial step(s) in signaling is important and an exciting area of cancer research.