Gene expession profle of melanoma subtypes selected by reflectance confocal microscopy. 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 Overall design: 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).