Ceramides are essential sphingolipids that mediate cell death and survival. Low ceramide content in melanoma is one mechanism of drug resistance. Thus, increasing the ceramide content in tumor cells is likely to increase their sensitivity to cytotoxic therapy. Aerobic exercise has been shown to modulate ceramide metabolism in healthy tissue, but the relationship between exercise and ceramide in tumors has not been evaluated. Here, we demonstrate that aerobic exercise causes tumor cell apoptosis and accumulation of pro-apoptotic ceramides in B16F10 but not BP melanoma models using mice. B16F10 tumor-bearing mice were treated with two weeks of moderate treadmill exercise, or were control, unexercised mice. A reverse-phase protein array was used to identify canonical p53 apoptotic signaling as a key pathway upregulated by exercise, and we demonstrate increased apoptosis in tumors from exercised mice. Consistent with this finding, pro-apoptotic C16-ceramide, and the ceramide generating enzyme ceramide synthase 6 (CerS6), were higher in B16F10 tumors from exercised mice, while pro-survival sphingosine kinase 1 (Sphk1) was lower. These data suggest that exercise contributes to B16F10 tumor cell death, possibly by modulating ceramide metabolism toward a pro-apoptotic ceramide/sphingosine-1-phosphate balance. However, these results are not consistent in BP tumors, demonstrating that exercise can have different effects on tumors of different patient or mouse origin with the same diagnosis. This work indicates that exercise might be most effective as a therapeutic adjuvant with therapies that kill tumor cells in a ceramide-dependent manner.
Keywords: CerS6; cell death; physical activity; skin cancer; sphingolipid metabolism.