Modulation of extracellular matrix/adhesion molecule expression by BRG1 is associated with increased melanoma invasiveness

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Metastatic melanoma is an aggressive malignancy that is resistant to therapy and has a poor prognosis. The progression of primary melanoma to metastatic disease is a multi-step process that requires dynamic regulation of gene expression through currently uncharacterized epigenetic mechanisms. Epigenetic regulation of gene expression often involves changes in chromatin structure that are catalyzed by chromatin remodeling enzymes. Understanding the mechanisms involved in the regulation of gene expression during metastasis is important for developing an effective strategy to treat metastatic melanoma. SWI/SNF enzymes are multisubunit complexes that contain either BRG1 or BRM as the catalytic subunit. We previously demonstrated that heterogeneous SWI/SNF complexes containing either BRG1 or BRM are epigenetic modulators that regulate important aspects of the melanoma phenotype and are required for melanoma tumorigenicity in vitro.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>To characterize BRG1 expression during melanoma progression, we assayed expression of BRG1 in patient derived normal skin and in melanoma specimen. BRG1 mRNA levels were significantly higher in stage IV melanomas compared to stage III tumors and to normal skin. To determine the role of BRG1 in regulating the expression of genes involved in melanoma metastasis, we expressed BRG1 in a melanoma cell line that lacks BRG1 expression and examined changes in extracellular matrix and adhesion molecule expression. We found that BRG1 modulated the expression of a subset of extracellular matrix remodeling enzymes and adhesion proteins. Furthermore, BRG1 altered melanoma adhesion to different extracellular matrix components. Expression of BRG1 in melanoma cells that lack BRG1 increased invasive ability while down-regulation of BRG1 inhibited invasive ability in vitro. Activation of metalloproteinase (MMP) 2 expression greatly contributed to the BRG1 induced increase in melanoma invasiveness. We found that BRG1 is recruited to the MMP2 promoter and directly activates expression of this metastasis associated gene.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We provide evidence that BRG1 expression increases during melanoma progression. Our study has identified BRG1 target genes that play an important role in melanoma metastasis and we show that BRG1 promotes melanoma invasive ability in vitro. These results suggest that increased BRG1 levels promote the epigenetic changes in gene expression required for melanoma metastasis to proceed.</p

Stability-Indicating LC Method for the Determination of Prasugrel Hydrochloride in Pharmaceutical Dosage Form

A simple, rapid and precise method was developed for the quantitative estimation of prasugrel hydrochloride in pharmaceutical dosage form. A chromatographic separation of prasugrel and its degradants was achieved with Zorbax XDB C8, 150 x 4.6 mm, 3.5μm analytical column using aqueous solution of 0.05 M ammonium acetate pH 4.5 with acetic acid-acetonitrile (40:60 v/v). The instrumental settings include flow rate of 1.0 ml/min, column temperature at 30°C and detector wavelength of 254 nm using a photodiode array detector. Theoretical plates for prasugrel were 7023. Tailing factor for prasugrel was 1.11. Prasugrel was exposed to thermal, photolytic, hydrolytic and oxidative stress conditions, and the stressed samples were analyzed by the proposed method. Peak homogeneity data of prasugrel was obtained using photodiode array detector in the stressed sample chromatograms, which demonstrated the specificity of the method for the estimation in presence of degradants. The described method showed excellent linearity over a range of 10–300 μg/ml for prasugrel. The correlation coefficient is 0.999. The relative standard deviation of peak area for six measurements is always less than 2%. Overall, the proposed method was found to be suitable and accurate for quantitative determination and stability study of prasugrel in pharmaceutical dosage form