Biglycan expression in the melanoma microenvironment promotes invasiveness via increased tissue stiffness inducing integrin-β1 expression

Abstract

Novel targeted and immunotherapeutic approaches have revolutionized the treatment of metastatic melanoma. A better understanding of the melanomamicroenvironment, in particular the interaction of cells with extracellular matrix molecules, may help to further improve these new therapeutic strategies. We observed that the extracellular matrix molecule biglycan (Bgn) was expressed in certain human melanoma cells and primary fibroblasts when evaluated by microarraybased gene expression analysis. Bgn expression in the melanoma tissues correlated with low overall-survival and low progression-free-survival in patients. To understand the functional role of Bgn we used gene-targeted mice lacking funct..