Figure 5.

(a) Weight of the tumors developed in nude mice injected subcutaneously with 1 × 10⁶ B16 melanoma cells transfected with the indicated siRNA. Tumors were isolated 10 days after the injection, 3 mice for each siRNA were injected. (b) Survival curves for 44 metastatic melanoma patients were calculated using a Kaplan-Meier analysis with a Mantel-Cox long rank statistical significance test. Data are from the data set GSE19232²². (c) Immunoblot of control or FANCD2-suppressed WM9 melanoma cells that were untreated or exposed to vemurafenib (1 μM for 48 h) with the indicated antibodies. (d) Proliferation of WM9 or FANCD2-silenced WM9 melanoma cells that were untreated or exposed to vemurafenib (1 μM for 48 h). The statistical analysis was performed using Student’s T test, ** indicates p < 0.01 and *** indicates p < 0.001. (e) Schematic model summarising the observations made in this manuscript. FANC pathway, contributes to DNA damage response downstream of MiTF, avoiding the DNA damage-dependent senescence programme to take place, whereas MITF controls both ROS levels as well as DNA damage response, in a FANC pathway-independent and -dependent manner, respectively.