Gene expession profle of melanoma subtypes selected by reflectance confocal microscopy

Melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer, characterized by high cellular heterogeneity which contributes to therapy resistance and unpredictable disease outcome. Recently, by correlating Reflectance-Confocal-Microscopy (RCM) morphology with histopathological type, we identified four distinct melanoma-subtypes: dendritic-cell (DC), round-cell (RC), dermal-nest (DN), and combined-type (CT) melanomas. Our results demontsrate that each melanoma subtypes has a distinct biological and gene expression profile, related to tumor aggressiveness, confirming that RCM can be a dependable tool for in vivo detecting different types of melanoma and for early diagnostic screening In the study preseted here, 32 patients (9 samples for DC melaomas, 6 samples for RC melanomas, 7 samples for DN melanoma and 10 samples for CT melanomas) were analysed. NanoString nCounter technology was performed by PharmaDiagen team (Pordenone, Italy) and the analysis was focused on 770 genes (nCounter PanCancer Progression Panel).

黑色素瘤（Melanoma）是致死性最高的皮肤癌类型，其核心特征为高细胞异质性，该特性可诱发治疗抵抗并导致疾病转归难以预测。近期，本研究团队通过将反射共聚焦显微镜（Reflectance-Confocal-Microscopy, RCM）的形态学特征与组织病理分型相关联，鉴定出四种不同的黑色素瘤亚型：树突状细胞型（dendritic-cell, DC）、圆形细胞型（round-cell, RC）、真皮巢型（dermal-nest, DN）以及混合型（combined-type, CT）黑色素瘤。本研究结果显示，每种黑色素瘤亚型均具备独特的生物学特性与基因表达谱，且与肿瘤侵袭性密切相关，这证实RCM可作为可靠工具，用于体内检测不同类型的黑色素瘤并开展早期诊断筛查。在本次研究中，共分析了32例患者的样本（其中树突状细胞型黑色素瘤样本9份、圆形细胞型黑色素瘤样本6份、真皮巢型黑色素瘤样本7份、混合型黑色素瘤样本10份）。相关实验由意大利波代诺内的PharmaDiagen团队采用NanoString nCounter技术完成，分析聚焦于770个基因（nCounter PanCancer Progression Panel，即nCounter泛癌进展基因面板）。