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bFGF is the putative natural growth factor for human melanocytes

  • Rapid Communications in Cell Biology
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Editor’s statement In this manuscript Dr. Ruth Halaban and her collaborators demonstrate the mitogenic action on melanocytes of a known growth factor synergistically with cAMP, which has not been demonstrated so far. In addition, the data demonstrate that mitogenic activity toward normal melanocytes in tissue extracts and melanoma cells is antigenically related to bFGF, suggesting the involvement of this growth factor in the transformation of normal melanocytes to melanomas.

Summary

Normal human melanocytes, unlike pigment cells from metastatic melanomas, do not survive in culture in routine, serum-supplemented media. The search for natural growth factors for melanocytes has shown that mitogenic activity is ubiquitous in several tissues and in melanomas. Of several known growth factors tested, basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) was the only one mitogenic for melanocytes but only in the presence of cyclic-adenosine-monophosphate (cAMP) stimulators. The mitogenic activity toward melanocytes in tissues and melanoma cell extracts had high affinity for heparin and antibodies to bFGF synthetic peptides. These results suggest that one of the growth factors for melanocytes might be bFGF or a bFGF-like polypeptide and that autocrine production of bFGF-like molecules by melanoma cells may contribute to the malignant phenotype of melanocytes. Because acidic FGF (aFGF) did not stimulate growth, the receptors for bFGF on melanocytes might be significantly different from those for a FGF.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Dermatology, Yale University School of Medicine, 500 LCI, P. O. Box 3333, 06510, New Haven, Connecticut

    Ruth Halaban & Sikha Ghosh

  2. Department of Neuroendocrinology, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 92037, La Jolla, California

    Andrew Baird

Authors
  1. Ruth Halaban
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  2. Sikha Ghosh
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  3. Andrew Baird
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Additional information

This work was supported by the Ruth Estrin Memorial for Cancer Research and NIH Grant 5R10 CA04679-26.

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Halaban, R., Ghosh, S. & Baird, A. bFGF is the putative natural growth factor for human melanocytes. In Vitro Cell Dev Biol 23, 47–52 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02623492

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