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BrafV600E cooperates with Pten loss to induce metastatic melanoma

Nature Genetics volume 41, pages 544–552 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Mutational activation of BRAF is the earliest and most common genetic alteration in human melanoma. To build a model of human melanoma, we generated mice with conditional melanocyte-specific expression of BRafV600E. Upon induction of BRafV600E expression, mice developed benign melanocytic hyperplasias that failed to progress to melanoma over 15–20 months. By contrast, expression of BRafV600E combined with Pten tumor suppressor gene silencing elicited development of melanoma with 100% penetrance, short latency and with metastases observed in lymph nodes and lungs. Melanoma was prevented by inhibitors of mTorc1 (rapamycin) or MEK1/2 (PD325901) but, upon cessation of drug administration, mice developed melanoma, indicating the presence of long-lived melanoma-initiating cells in this system. Notably, combined treatment with rapamycin and PD325901 led to shrinkage of established melanomas. These mice, engineered with a common genetic profile to human melanoma, provide a system to study melanoma's cardinal feature of metastasis and for preclinical evaluation of agents designed to prevent or treat metastatic disease.

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Figure 1: Benign hyperplasias induced by melanocyte-specific expression of BRafV600E.
Figure 2: BRafV600E cooperates with Pten loss in the induction of malignant melanoma.
Figure 3: BRafV600E cooperates with Pten loss in the induction of invasive and metastatic melanoma.
Figure 4: Prevention of BRafV600E-induced melanomas by rapamycin.
Figure 5: Prevention of BRafV600E-induced melanomas by PD325901.
Figure 6: Melanoma regression in response to combination treatment with PD325901 and rapamycin.
Figure 7: Inhibition of mouse melanoma cell proliferation by rapamycin or PD325901 in vitro.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the members of the McMahon and Bosenberg laboratories as well as B. Bastian, L. Chin, E. Filenova, B. Hann, M. Herlyn, L. Johnson, G. Merlino, P. P. Pandolfi, V. Hearing, M. Held, G. Kay and D. Matzen for the provision of mouse strains, reagents, advice and support. M.M. thanks A. Ricart and J. Sebolt-Leopold (Pfizer) for provision of PD325901 and acknowledges the support of the University of California San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center Mouse Pathology and Pre-Clinical Therapeutics cores. R.A.D. is supported as an American Cancer Society Research Professor. This work was supported by grants from the Melanoma Research Foundation, U.C. Discovery Award and from the US National Institutes of Health (CA 108972 to M.M., CA 84313 to R.A.D. and CA 89124 and CA 112054 to M.B., respectively).

Author information

Author notes

  1. David Dankort, Mingjian J You & Marcus Bosenberg

    Present address: Present addresses: Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, H3A 1B1 (D.D.); Department of Hematopathlogy, Division of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA (M.J.Y.); Department of Dermatology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (M.B.).,

  2. David Dankort and David P Curley: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cancer Research Institute & Department of Cell and Molecular Pharmacology, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA

    David Dankort, Robert A Cartlidge & Martin McMahon

  2. Department of Pathology, University of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, Vermont, USA

    David P Curley, Betsy Nelson, William E Damsky Jr & Marcus Bosenberg

  3. Cancer Research Institute & Department of Pathology, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA

    Anthony N Karnezis

  4. Departments of Medical Oncology, Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science, Medicine & Genetics, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Mingjian J You & Ronald A DePinho

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Contributions

M.M. and M.B. established a collaboration for the exchange of relevant mouse strains to enable the generation and analysis of Tyr::CreER, BrafCA, Ptenlox mice and contributed to the manuscript equally as senior authors. D.D. (UCSF) and D.P.C. (University of Vermont) performed all of the mouse experiments in parallel. Representative figures were selected for publication by D.D., D.P.C., M.M. and M.B. and were prepared for publication by D.D. R.A.C. performed immunoblot analysis of 2697T cells treated with PD325901. B.N. and W.E.D. assisted with and optimized mouse tumor induction and performed immunohistochemical analysis. A.N.K. analyzed Tyr::CreER, BrafCA, Ptenlox4-5 mice treated with multiple cycles of PD325901. M.J.Y. generated and characterized Ptenlox5 mice in the laboratory of R.A.D. M.M. wrote the manuscript and shepherded it through review with contributions from D.D., D.P.C., M.J.Y., R.A.D. and M.B.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Martin McMahon or Marcus Bosenberg.

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Dankort, D., Curley, D., Cartlidge, R. et al. BrafV600E cooperates with Pten loss to induce metastatic melanoma. Nat Genet 41, 544–552 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.356

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