Luteolin inhibits melanoma growth in vitro and in vivo via regulating ECM and oncogenic pathways but not ROS.

•Luteolin inhibited melanoma tumor growth in vitro and in vivo.•Luteolin induced ROS in melanoma cells but ROS was not the cause of growth inhibition.•RNA-Seq and bioinformatic analysis in 4 melanoma cell lines revealed that luteolin inhibited ECM pathway, oncogenic pathway and modulated immune signaling.•Each cell line exhibited unique set of DEGs which could only be comprehensively understood by pathway analysis in multiple cell lines.•The luteolin-regulated ECM pathway was validated in vitro, with a new finding that luteolin inhibited cell growth extremely effective in low density cells.