CCN1 is a novel target to reduce the metastasis of melanoma

Melanoma is becoming increasingly common in recent years and has a very high mortality rate, owing largely to its highly metastatic nature. It tends to metastasize early in the course of the disease, and after metastasis is resistant to most current therapies. Preclinical data has indicated that heparin administered to patients as an antithrombotic treatment also has anti-metastatic properties. Heparin has been shown to interfere with the binding of the integrin Very Late Antigen 4 (VLA-4) to its ligand Vascular Cell Adhesion Molecule 1 (VCAM-1) and in a recent paper the laboratory of Bendas (Thrombosis and Haemostasis, Prepublished online) demonstrated that CCN1 binds to VLA-4 and interference in this binding by heparin results in reduced strength of the VLA-4/VCAM-1 binding. This indicates that CCN1 might represent a good target for reducing the metastasis, and thus mortality, of melanoma.