The abundance of metabolites related to protein methylation correlates with the metastatic capacity of human melanoma xenografts

Abstract

, and methylation at these sites was also enhanced in efficiently metastasizing tumors. Erasing either of these marks by genetically or pharmacologically silencing the histone methyltransferase SETDB1 or EZH2 had no effect on primary tumor growth but reduced cellular invasiveness and metastatic spread. Thus, metabolite profiling can uncover targetable epigenetic requirements for the metastasis of human melanoma cells.