Under these conditions, the present study was the first to report the <i>in vitro</i> upregulation of IFN-1 expression in response to photodynamic treatment in melanoma.
Our findings underscore a beneficial effect of DAC plus IFN-I combined treatment against melanoma through both direct and immune-mediated anti-tumor effects.
Though not all patients responded to IFN1, clinical trials have shown that patients with high risk melanoma, a highly refractory solid malignancy, benefit greatly from intermediate IFN1 treatment in regards to relapse-free and distant-metastasis-free survival.
Seventeen SN tested for loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at 9p and 10q regions, known to be frequently deleted in melanoma, showed LOH at the 9p loci D9S942 and IFNA.
LOH was detected in 10 out of 27 informative naevi (37%) at D9S171 and in eight out of 19 (42%) at IFNA in the dissected naevus cell clusters, and in nine out of 27 (33%) at D9S171 and seven out of 19 (36%) at IFNA in the associated melanomas.
We used two highly informative (CA)n repeats, D9S126 and IFNA, previously implicated in familial malignant melanoma (MLM), to conduct linkage analysis.
These data confirm the existence of a melanoma susceptibility gene on 9p and indicate that this locus most probably lies outside of the IFNA-D9S126 interval.