RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: Malignant melanoma is one kind of rare cancer in human and animals, which occurs not only in skin but also in the mucous membranes of the nose, mouth, anus, digestive tract, and in the uvea (choroid) of the eye. In order to develop therapies, a better understanding of the genetic landscape and signal pathways are needed. Numerous studies highlighted the importance of NKG2A-HLA-E in tumor immunotherapy, but the function and mechanism of HLA-E in tumor cells have seldom been studied alone. The statistical analyses from publicly available database Oncomine and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) showed that HLA-E is highly expressed in melanoma compared to non-transformed counterparts. In addition, melanoma patients with HLA-E high expression had a worse OS rate than the patients with low expression. These data indicate the importance of HLA-E in human melanoma. Qa-1b is the homolog of HLA-E in mouse. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the function and mechanism of Qa-1b in mouse melanoma. METHODS: Mouse melanoma cell line B16-F10 and allogenic melanoma model were used to investigate the function and mechanism of Qa-1b in melanoma. RESULTS: Qa-1b was highly expressed in B16-F10 compared with normal mouse epidermal cells. Qa-1b knockdown inhibited B16-F10 cell proliferation and migration in vitro and allogenic melanoma process in vivo. Furthermore, Qa-1b knockdown promoted cell cycle arrest at G0/G1 phase and cell apoptosis through Ras-Raf-MAPK signal pathway. CONCLUSION: Qa-1b functions as an oncogenic factor and it can be used as a new therapeutic target in melanoma.
