Canine_oral_melanoma

Primary mucosal melanoma (MM), which arises from melanocytes located in mucosal membranes, frequently presents late and has a poor prognosis; ~14% 5-year survival rate. MM makes up only ~1.4% of all melanomas and it is this rarity that makes knowledge of the genetic changes that contribute to its pathogenesis limited. Oral melanoma is a spontaneous syngeneic cancer occurring in outbred, immunocompetent dogs and is a clinically faithful therapeutic model for human mucosal melanoma; it is an extremely malignant tumor with a high degree of local invasiveness and high metastatic propensity. Thus we plan to profile the somatic alterations and mutation spectra in canine oral melanoma genomes, by extracting DNA from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) cores of lesional and non-lesional tissues of primaries as well as matching metastases, and analysing the DNA by exome sequencing. By using a cross-species comparative genomics approach we hope to be able to identify novel driver genes in mucosal melanoma.