Uveal melanoma is the most frequent primary intraocular tumor in the adult population. This malignancy has a high mortality rate and responds poorly to existing chemotherapy. Recently, the tumor environment has been found to exert a profound influence on drug response through cell interaction with components from the extracellular matrix (ECM). In the present study, we investigated whether individual components from the ECM may affect cell survival and/or cell death induced by the cytotoxic agent cisplatin on the SP6.5 uveal melanoma cell line. Tumor cells were shown by immunofluorescence analyses to be surrounded by the ECM proteins fibronectin (FN), type IV collagen (CIV) and laminin (LM), both at the primary and metastatic sites. Binding of SP6.5 cells to FN, LM and CIV is primarily dictated by the expression of membrane bound integrins from the β1 family as revealed by cell adhesion assays conducted on ECM-coated culture plates. Analysis of cell death by flow cytometry demonstrated that culturing SP6.5 cells in the presence of FN, CIV and LM, substantially reduced the percentage of cells undergoing apoptosis after cisplatin treatment when compared with those seeded on a non-permissive matrix. These results suggest that adhesion of the SP6.5 uveal melanoma cells to the ECM proteins FN, CIV and LM might therefore confer resistance to the chemotherapeutic agent cisplatin. The cellular resistance induced by the ECM proteins toward cisplatin could explain in part the local recurrence of metastasis derived from uveal melanoma often observed clinically after chemotherapy.

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