line, but hypoxia influenced GPR56 expression in breast or bladder cancer cell lines. GPR56 is a target gene for vezatin, an adherens junctions transmembrane protein, which is a tumor suppressor in gastric cancer. Xu et al. used an in vivo metastatic model of human melanoma to show that GPR56 is downregulated in highly metastatic cells. Later, by ectopic expression and RNA interference they confirmed that GPR56 inhibits melanoma tumor growth and metastasis. Silenced expression of GPR56 in HeLa cells enhanced apoptosis and anoikis, but suppressed anchorage-independent growth and cell adhesion. High ecotropic viral integration site-1 acute myeloid leukemia (EVI1-high AML) expresses GPR56 that was found to be a transcriptional target of EVI1. Silencing expression of GPR56 decreases adhesion, cell growth and induces apoptosis through reduced RhoA signaling. GPR56 suppresses the angiogenesis and melanoma growth through inhibition of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) via PKCα signaling pathway. Furthermore, GPR56 expression was found to be negatively correlated with the malignancy of melanomas in human patients. References External links Adhesion GPCR consortium GeneReviews/NIH/NCBI/UW entry on Polymicrogyria Overview G protein-coupled receptors