.Drosophila melanogaster models of Uveal Melanoma

Abstract

Uveal melanoma (UM) is the melanoma in the vascular layer of the eye called Uveal tract which is comprised of choroid, the ciliary body and the iris. Hallmarks of cancer includes mutations that leads to gain of oncogenes or loss of tumour suppressors. This alteration is the basics of cancer genetics. A detailed and thorough understanding of cancer genetics will aid in mimicking the genetic changes which take place in cancer cells. Understanding the genetics changes will enable us to enumerate its development process and the disease pathophysiological in the laboratory. It is known that UMs with high metastasis risk are characterized by BAP1 loss of function (LOF) mutations, coincident with activating mutations in the G-proteins GNAQ or GNA11. Animal models play an important role in understanding the cancer development and growth especially Drosophila. They are used to develop novel therapeutics against malignancies. Many studies have focused on creating animal models for uveal melanoma. One approach is using genetic modified animal models. Here we generated a Drosophila model for UM. We find that combination of BAP1 knockdown with activated human GNA11 expression in the eye-antenna disc of the Drosophila larva is not different from control. Our analysis shows that a combination of both drivers is neither hyperplastic or invasive. This result will further inform how to establish UM in Drosophila