Abstract
Skin cutaneous melanoma (SCM) is a common malignant tumor of the skin and its pathogenesis still needs to be studied. In this work, we constructed a co-expression network and screened for hub genes by weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) using the GSE98394 dataset. The relationship between the mRNA expression of hub genes and the prognosis of patients with melanoma was validated by Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) database. Furthermore, immunohistochemistry in the Human Protein Atlas was used to validate hub genes and grayscale analysis was performed using ImageJ software. It was found that the yellow module was most significantly associated with the difference between common nevus and SCM, and 13 genes whose expression correlation >0.9 were candidate hub genes. The expression of three genes (STK26, KCNT2, CASP12) was correlated with the prognosis of SCM. STK26 (P = 0.0024) and KCNT2 (P < 0.0001) were significantly different between normal skin and SCM. These three hub genes have potential value as predictors for accurate diagnosis and prognosis of SCM in the future.
Highlights
Skin cutaneous melanoma (SCM) is a highly aggressive malignant tumor that originates from neural crest melanocytes and is triggered by hyperplasia of abnormal melanocytes
We described the key modules and hub genes with significant differences between nevus and SCM based on weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) and identified novel biomarkers associated with SCM prognosis through the prognosis association with Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) database
Our results indicated that STK26 was downregulated in SCM compared to nevus, and its low expression was associated with poor prognosis of primary melanoma
Summary
Skin cutaneous melanoma (SCM) is a highly aggressive malignant tumor that originates from neural crest melanocytes and is triggered by hyperplasia of abnormal melanocytes. According to data released by GLOBOCAN online database (gco.iarc.fr), in 2018, there were 287,723 new cases (1.6% of the total cases) of SCM in the world, and 60,712 of these patients (0.6% of total cancer deaths) died [1]. Patients with SCM potentially lose 20.4 years of their lifespan, which is significantly higher than the 16.6 years for all other malignant tumors [3]. SCM has become one of the malignant tumors that seriously threaten human health. The phenotypic predispositions in the risk factors of SCM included atypical mole or dysplastic nevus pattern [5] and increased mole count ( large nevi) [6]. The transformation mechanism of nevus into SCM is still unclear, and further research is urgently needed
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