Microspectrofluorometry of Human Melanoma Cells and Fibroblasts Treated with Azelaic Acid

A variety of dicarboxylic acids (Breatnach, 1984;Hsu, 1986;Passy, 1984;Picardo, 1983;Robbins, 1985;Schachtshabel et al., 1986), such as azelaic acid and sebacic acid have been shown to be cytotoxic for melanoma cells with varying degrees of effectiveness. The mechanism of action of these drugs remains to be elucidated, but evidence from electron microscopic studies points to the mitochondria as a primary target of dicarboxylic acids. The microspectrofluorometric approach (Hirschberg, 1978;Kohen et al., 1986) which we have developed opens the possibility to investigate the intracellular actions of azelaic acids and other such compounds in situ at the level of organelles and metabolic compartments. An illustrative use of this method has already been made in connection with another dermatological affection: a microspectrofluorometric study was carried out recently on the effect of anthralin (Kohen et al., 1986), an antipsoriatic drug, on cellular structures and metabolism.