PHARMACEUTICAL COMPOSITIONS CONTAINING AN AGENT EFFECTIVE TO REDUCE THE EFFECTIVE AMOUNT OF CLUSTERIN

摘要

Treatment of melanoma is achieved through reduction in the effective amount of clusterin in melanoma cells of in a mammalian subject, preferably a human. A therapeutic agent effective to reduce the effective amount of clusterin in the melanoma cells is administered to the subject. The therapeutic agent may be, for example, an antisense ODN or small inhibitory RNA (siRNA) compound targeted to clusterin. bcl-xL in a subject or cell line can also be regulated by administering to the subject or cell line an agent effective to modulate the amount of clusterin expression. In particular, in clusterin expressing cells, the expression of bcl-xL is down-regulated when the effective amount of clusterin is reduced. Such inhibition is significant because bcl-xL is known to act as an inhibitor of apoptosis.