Cutaneous Melanoma (CM) is an aggressive and invasive cancer of the skin. Epigenetic mechanisms are fundamentally important for cancer initiation and development. The application of some insights may contribute to further progress in the diagnosis and therapy of melanoma, a deadly type of cancer.
While a plethora of DNA methylation alterations occur in melanoma, it remains elusive how they are caused. It has been proposed that either active processes, e.g., an aberrant activity or function of DNMT enzymes, or passive ones, for instance, changes in epigenetic modifications that regulate targeting of DNA methylation, may be involved [36][30].
A major risk factor for bladder cancer is persistent exposure to the harmful carcinogens of tobacco smoking, which is estimated to account for 50% of tumors [44][31] and contributes to the high mutational rate in that cancer. There is thus a parallel to the etiology of melanoma, where exposure to another exogenous carcinogen—harmful UVB radiation—is the major cause. The previously proposed PrimeEpiHit hypothesis for UC [44,45][31][32] may, therefore, explain methylation alterations in CM carcinogenesis. According to this modified hypothesis, chronic UVB radiation exposure may occasionally also hit genes with key functions in one-carbon-group metabolism. As a result, their transcription may become impaired, and subsequently, their epigenetic status may be altered. Epigenetic silencing because of gene disruption has been experimentally demonstrated [46][33]. Interestingly, analyzing a comprehensive mortality rate dataset for 30 types of cancer for 52 provinces in Spain, spanning 1978–1992, it has been found that melanoma correlated with bladder and lung cancer, suggesting common risk factors and mechanisms [47][34]. Key genes involved in one-carbon-group metabolism of course comprise a very small percentage of the whole genome, but due to the chronic carcinogen exposure, nonetheless, this may occur at some minor frequency, which appears in accordance with the low incidence.
Impairment of key genes of one-carbon-group metabolism causes imbalances in the involved methyl group metabolic pathways. This disturbs the delicate SAM:SAH ratio and, consequently, genome-wide DNA methylation alterations, including LINE-1 hypomethylation that contributes to genetic instabilities; thus, cellular transformation occurs. Notably, this process could be enhanced by the well-described deficiencies of one-carbon-group metabolism associated with aging, which are likewise characterized by accumulation of SAH and DNA hypomethylation [48][35]. Age is an important risk factor for UC, as well as CM. Figure 1 provides an overview illustration of the key metabolites and enzymes involved in methyl group and polyamine metabolism and their interactions.Focusing first on cancer-specific differential chromatin organization, for taking advantage of it in cancer diagnosis and therapy, it suggests screening after sites of chromatin with distinct differential organized structures for various melanoma stages, e.g., the first mesenchymal stage, which arises after the epithelial–mesenchymal transition. Once detecting such promising chromatin areas with, e.g., a more relaxed chromatin organization in a pathogenic melanoma cell population, it would be able to target it either for diagnosis or even for therapy. For diagnosis, e.g., taking advantage of the limited effectiveness of micrococcus nuclease (MN) on closed chromatin, it would be possible to pretreat melanoma and reference DNA and provide cancer-cell-originated DNA templates of MN-affected integrity for assaying them by sensitive PCR assays, as previously demonstrated [55][39]. For therapy, those cancer-cell-specific, differential organized chromatin areas could be targeted by CRISPR/Cas in vivo, taking advantage of its selective preference feature. Evolved as an adaptive immunity system that protects bacteria and archaea against phages and plasmids [56][40] by directing sequence-specific Cas9 endonuclease-mediated double-strand DNA cleavage (DSB) to the intruder’s DNA, and hence destroying its genetic information [57][41], this system has evolutionarily never been encountered as a substrate DNA, which is organized in complex, high-order, structured chromatin and, hence, has a high preference for binding to more easily accessible chromatin regions [58,59,60][42][43][44].
A further basic approach is to find within a certain distinct cancer cell population of interest, differentially methylated CpG dinucleotides forming a distinct, consistent, and characteristic methylation signature for this cell population. In the former investigations on prostate cancer and urothelial cancer specimens from patients, it was able to discover such unique DNA methylation signatures. The proposed strategy [45][32] is to screen using DNA methylation array technology after such differentially methylated CpG regions, and once detected, to validate and precisely dissect the cancer cell-specific DNA methylation pattern by bisulfite genomic sequencing [67][45]. Afterward, based on this information, it can define the outmost most suitable and robust MSPCR primers to sensitively detect this methylation signature.
Furthermore, a new methodological approach to separate cell-free DNA from cellular DNA and unreservedly apply bisulfite genomic sequencing and MSPCR on this pure cell-free DNA is recently presented. It is established that all tumors shed their cell-free DNAs that bear their unique DNA methylation patterns into the bloodstream [67][45], hence providing an easily accessible and exciting Achilles’ heel of cancer for effective diagnosis. For instance, PTEN promoter methylation was reported in cell-free DNA from 62% of the melanoma serum samples examined by pyrosequencing, indicating a good correlation with the same epigenetic alteration found in paired melanoma tissues [69][46].
MSPCR has been improved and enables, for the first time, relative quantification of DNA methylation in samples with identical and unequal genetic settings [71][47]. This is of importance for cancer samples, which often yield genetic aberrations, including melanoma, characterized by a higher number of chromosomal structural aberrations [72][48], and bladder carcinoma, characterized by early (pTa, pT1) chromosomal changes and imbalances [73][49]. A conventional normalization of MSPCR by using a housekeeping gene such as GAPDH or the ACTB gene may result in false results, especially if tumor samples from different patients must be compared, because, e.g., the copy number of the DNA segment containing the housekeeping gene chosen for normalization may vary in cancer DNA. The reliable measurement of DNA methylation by using MSPCR is based on DNA amplification, and it is extremely hindered by a variable number of template segments. In contrast, by using the idiolocal normalization of real-time, methylation-specific PCR (IDLN–MSP) [71][47], the normalization loci are chosen adjacent to the targeted loci. With this approach, it is guaranteed that in real-time MSPCR, the number of normalization loci is always as high as the number of targeted loci, reducing false-negative results in a significant manner, and this contributes to a significant improvement of DNA methylation measurements by MSPCR in tumor samples of different patient origin [71][47].