HGF and melanoma: However, following oncogenic transformation, melanoma cells gain expression of HGF, allowing autocrine c-MET/HGF signalling that functionally decouples melanoma cells from keratinocytes, facilitating invasion and migration (Natali et al., 1993; Otsuka et al., 1998; Rusciano et al., 1998; Li et al., 2001b).