Complex investigations regarding the impact of betulinic acid gold nanoparticles on ganglioside type biomarkers associated to malignant melanoma – MelaGanglioBet – 97TE/2025

Malignant melanoma is an aggressive form of skin cancer with rapid metastasis and poor prognosis. The diagnosis of melanoma requires several techniques and standard sets of biomarkers, among which gangliosides, a class of glycosphingolipids, show great potential due to their rich expression in this type of cancer. Classical therapeutic options for the treatment of melanoma are particularly limited due to the low survival rate among patients. Betulinic acid (BA), a phytocompound from the class of pentacyclic triterpenes, has been intensively studied due to its antiproliferative and anticancer properties demonstrated especially on hunam melanoma cell lines. The present project consists in the discovery of new species of ganglioside biomarkers and the influence that BA has on the expression of this type of biomarkers in tumor tissue. The experiments will be carried out on an animal model of melanoma. The research will use innovative methods of glycoscreening and sequencing, to determine the pattern, expression and structure of tumor tissue-specific gangliosidic biomarkers. These methods will also be applied after the intratumoral treatment with invasosomes loaded with BA gold nanoparticles, in order to evaluate the effect of BA on the expression of ganglioside biomarkers in the tumor tissue and to discover possible interactions between BA and the glycosphingolipids characteristic of melanoma.