Lucianò Anna Maria, Tata Ada Maria
Department of Biology and Biotechnologies Charles Darwin, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy.
Research Centre of Neurobiology Daniel Bovet, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy.
Cancers (Basel). 2020 Oct 27;12(11):3141. doi: 10.3390/cancers12113141.
In the last two decades, the scientific community has come to terms with the importance of non-neural acetylcholine in light of its multiple biological and pathological functions within and outside the nervous system. Apart from its well-known physiological role both in the central and peripheral nervous systems, in the autonomic nervous system, and in the neuromuscular junction, the expression of the acetylcholine receptors has been detected in different peripheral organs. This evidence has contributed to highlight new roles for acetylcholine in various biological processes, (e.g., cell viability, proliferation, differentiation, migration, secretion). In addition, growing evidence in recent years has also demonstrated new roles for acetylcholine and its receptors in cancer, where they are involved in the modulation of cell proliferation, apoptosis, angiogenesis, and epithelial mesenchymal transition. In this review, we describe the functional characterization of acetylcholine receptors in different tumor types, placing attention on melanoma. The latest set of data accessible through literature, albeit limited, highlights how cholinergic receptors both of muscarinic and nicotinic type can play a relevant role in the migratory processes of melanoma cells, suggesting their possible involvement in invasion and metastasis.
在过去二十年中，鉴于非神经乙酰胆碱在神经系统内外具有多种生物学和病理学功能，科学界已逐渐认识到其重要性。除了在中枢和外周神经系统、自主神经系统以及神经肌肉接头中众所周知的生理作用外，在不同的外周器官中也检测到了乙酰胆碱受体的表达。这一证据有助于凸显乙酰胆碱在各种生物学过程（如细胞活力、增殖、分化、迁移、分泌）中的新作用。此外，近年来越来越多的证据还表明，乙酰胆碱及其受体在癌症中具有新的作用，它们参与细胞增殖、凋亡、血管生成和上皮间质转化的调节。在本综述中，我们描述了不同肿瘤类型中乙酰胆碱受体的功能特征，重点关注黑色素瘤。通过文献可获得的最新一组数据虽然有限，但突出了毒蕈碱型和烟碱型胆碱能受体在黑色素瘤细胞迁移过程中如何发挥相关作用，表明它们可能参与侵袭和转移。
