Simvastatin reduces melanoma progression in a murine model

Statins are a class of drugs that inhibit the rate-limiting step in the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway and show an anticancer effect, probably through the inhibition of cells proliferation. To date, the exact mechanism at basis of cancer cells growth arrest induced by statins is not known. Here we reported that simvastatin is able to induce apoptosis in melanoma cells but not in normal cells and also able to contrast the growth of tumor in an experimental melanoma murine model. In particular, we observed an interesting delay in the tumor development in almost the 50% of the simvastatin administered animals and a strong reduction of the tumor volume with a differences of about 150% respect to the controls. Also the survival rate was significantly higher in mice that received the drug with a survival increase of about the 130% respect to the controls. The tumor growth reduction in mice was supported by the results of cells migration assay, confirming that simvastatin clearly reduced the cells migration. Lastly, simvastatin induced a strong down regulation of Non0 gene-expression, an important growth factor involved in the splicing regulation. This result could explain the decrease of melanoma cells proliferation, suggesting a possible action mechanism. The results derived from our experimentation may sustain the many reports on the anticancer inhibitory property of statins and encourage new studies on this drug for a possible use in therapy, probably in combination with the conventional chemotherapy.