Differential expression of Mart-1 in human uveal melanoma cells

Uveal melanoma (UM) is one of the most common primary intraocular malignant tumors in adults. Melanoma antigen recognized by T cell-1 (Mart-1), one of the melanosome-specific proteins, has been widely studied as a marker recognized by cytotoxicity T lymphocytes. Mart-1 is considered to play a critical role in the immunotherapy for melanoma. Additionally, as a biomarker, Mart-1 is often used with other tumor-associated antigens for antidiastole in cutaneous melanoma (CM), uveal melanoma (UM) and nevus. In this study, the differential expression of Mart-1 was investigated in four human UM cells (SP6.5, VUP, OCM-1 and OM431) on three levels of analysis: messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), protein and, eventually, morphology. The results revealed that SP6.5 cells had high Mart-1 protein expression while VUP cells had almost none. OCM-1 and OM431 cells produced less Mart-1 than SP6.5 cells according to Western blot analysis, although OM431 cells had the highest expression of Mart-1 mRNA according to real-time PCR. The results indicate the potential use of Mart-1 in the development of therapy for UM.