Overexpression of SLC25A15 is involved in the proliferation of cutaneous melanoma and leads to poor prognosis

Abstract

Melanoma is a skin tumor with a high degree of malignancy, poor prognosis and few effective therapies. Deprivation of the arginine from cancer cells through transport inhibition and arginine depletion is a novel strategy for cancer therapy. In this study, we have investigated the effect ofSLC25A15, which encodes the mitochondrial ornithine carrier 1, on melanoma progression. Using bioinformatics methods to screen the data from TCGA and GEO, we found thatSLC25A15is overexpressed in patients with melanoma and negatively related with the overall and disease-free survival rates. Knockdown the expression ofSLC25A15by siRNA could effectively inhibit the proliferation of A375 melanoma cells, as detected by CCK8 and colony formation. Furthermore,SLC25A15siRNA was able to promote apoptosis of A375 cells, which exhibited decreased expression levels of the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 while showing increased pro-apoptotic protein Bax and cleaved caspase-3. All these results suggest that the overexpression ofSLC25A15is involved in the progression of melanoma and may predict the prognosis of melanoma. This may shed new lights on the diagnosis and therapy of melanoma in the future.