Gray-Horse Melanoma-A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

Title (eng)
Gray-Horse Melanoma-A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Author
Daniela M Brodesser
Author
Karin Schlangen
Author
Alexandro Rodriguez-Rojas
Author
Benno Kuropka
Author
Pavlos G. Doulidis
Author
Sabine Brandt
Author
Barbara Pratscher
Abstract (eng)
Malignant melanoma (MM) affects not only humans but also animals, with gray horses being particularly predisposed to acquiring the disease. Multiomics have greatly advanced the understanding of human MM. In contrasty little is known regarding the pathogenesis of gray-horse melanoma and the unique phenomenon of melanoma “dormancy” in some animals. To help close this gap in knowledge, melanoma tissue and intact skin collected from gray horses were subjected to transcriptome analysis using RNAseq. In the next step, cultured primary tumor cells and normal skin fibroblasts were established from gray horses, and their protein expression profiles were determined. The obtained data unambiguously identified gray-horse melanoma (ghM) as a malignant tumor, as reflected by the overrepresentation of pathways typically activated in human melanoma and other human cancers. These included the RAS/RAF/MAPK, the IRS/IGF1R, and the PI3K/AKT signaling networks. In addition, the obtained data suggest that the key molecules RAC1, RAS, and BRAF, which are frequently mutated in human melanoma, may also contain activating mutations in ghM, whilst PTEN may harbor loss-of-function mutations. This issue will be subject to downstream analyses determining the mutational status in ghM to further advance the understanding of this frequent disease in gray horses.
Keywords (eng)
MelanomaGray-horse MelanomaTumor TissuePrimary Melanoma CellsRNAseqProteomics
Type (eng)
journal article
Language
[eng]
Persistent identifier
https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/o:4837
DOI
10.3390/ijms26146620
Is in series
Title (eng)
International Journal of Molecular Sciences
Volume
26
Issue
14
ISSN
1422-0067
Issued
2025
Number of pages
15
Publication
MDPI
Version type (eng)
version of record (published version)
Date issued
2025
Access rights (eng)
open access
License
CC BY 4.0 International
Rights statement (eng)
© 2025 by the authors