The morbidity and mortality of melanoma which accounts for 90% of cutaneous neoplasm-related deaths is growing over the last few decades. Common treatments for melanoma are limited to poor tissue selectivity, high toxicity and drug resistance. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is an effective adjuvant therapy and could be a promising therapy for melanoma. Multiple mechanisms are involved in PDT² and programmed cell death (PCD) which comprises of autophagy and apoptosis is likely to be a critical one. Whereas, the molecular mechanism and subsequent effect of PDT-induced autophagy in melanoma are still unclear. In this study, we first analyzed gene expression data in the TCGA³ and GEO⁴ databases to clarify that PDT-induced-autophagy improved the prognosis of melanoma. The expression of FOS which generally defined as an immediate-early gene (IEG) and related to cell autophagy was found significantly elevated after PDT. To further investigate whether FOS played a key role in PDT-induced-autophagy of melanoma, we first determined the optimum concentration of ICG solution for autophagy observation. Then, relative FOS expression was detected at mRNA and protein level and cell autophagy was observed by western blot and flow cytometry. We found that ICG-PDT treatment could significantly elevate FOS expression in SKCM⁵ B16 cells, and FOS promoted ICG-PDT-induced cell autophagy. To sum up, our data indicated that FOS was involved in ICG-PDT-induced-autophagy in melanoma and furthermore improved the prognosis of melanoma.

在过去的几十年中，占皮肤肿瘤相关死亡的90％的黑素瘤的发病率和死亡率正在增长。黑色素瘤的常见治疗限于组织选择性差，高毒性和耐药性。光动力疗法（PDT）是一种有效的辅助疗法，可能是有前景的黑色素瘤疗法。PDT ²涉及多种机制，程序性细胞死亡（PCD）包括自噬和凋亡可能是关键的机制。然而，PDT诱导的自噬在黑色素瘤中的分子机制及其后续作用仍不清楚。在这项研究中，我们首先分析了TCGA ³和GEO ⁴中的基因表达数据数据库来阐明PDT诱导的自噬改善了黑色素瘤的预后。发现PDS后，通常被定义为即早基因（IEG）并与细胞自噬相关的FOS的表达显着升高。为了进一步研究FOS是否在PDT诱导的黑色素瘤自噬中发挥关键作用，我们首先确定了用于自噬观察的ICG溶液的最佳浓度。然后，在mRNA和蛋白质水平检测相对FOS表达，并通过蛋白质印迹和流式细胞术观察细胞自噬。我们发现ICG-PDT处理可以显着提高SKCM ⁵ B16细胞中FOS的表达，而FOS促进了ICG-PDT诱导的细胞自噬。综上所述，我们的数据表明FOS参与了ICG-PDT诱导的黑色素瘤自噬，并进一步改善了黑色素瘤的预后。