Isolation and analysis of novel human melanocyte-specific cDNA clones

Human melanoma represents a neurocrest-derived malignancy, occurring in 10% of cases within the setting of a familial predisposition and in 90% of cases with sporadic onset. It is estimated that more than 85% of familial melanomas and about 40% of sporadic melanomas arise from melanocytic precursor lesions. In an attempt to isolate genes that may play a role in human melanocytic progression, we applied subtractive cDNA hybridization, involving repeated rounds of subtraction. This was followed by amplification of the remaining enriched cDNAs, which led to the isolation of several human melanocyte-enriched cDNA clones. Evidence is provided suggesting that these melanocyte-enriched cDNA probes may be derived from novel genes whose expression is significantly up-regulated in normal human melanocytes compared to early and advanced-stage human melanomas.