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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mol. Biosci.
Sec. Molecular Diagnostics and Therapeutics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2025.1543148
This article is part of the Research Topic Emerging Trends in Cancer Research: Diagnostic and Therapeutic Breakthroughs View all articles

Defining the High-Risk Category of Patients with Cutaneous Melanoma: a Practical Tool Based on Prognostic Modeling

Provisionally accepted
Oleksandr Dudin Oleksandr Dudin 1,2Ozar Mintser Ozar Mintser 2Vitaly Gurianov Vitaly Gurianov 3Nazarii Kobyliak Nazarii Kobyliak 1,3Denys Kozakov Denys Kozakov 1Sofiia Livshun Sofiia Livshun 1Oksana Sulaieva Oksana Sulaieva 1,4*
  • 1 Medical Laboratory CSD, Kyiv, Ukraine
  • 2 P. L. Shupyk National University of Health Care of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine
  • 3 Bogomolets National Medical University, Kyiv, Ukraine
  • 4 Kyiv Medical University, Kyiv, Ukraine

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: Although most cutaneous melanoma (CM) in its early stages is treatable, the risk of recurrence remains high and there is a particular ambiguity on patients prognosis. This drives to identification of prognostic biomarkers for predicting CM recurrence to guide appropriate treatment in patients with localized melanoma.Aim: This study aimed to develop a prognostic model for assessing the risk of recurrence in patients with CM, enabling prompt prognosis-driven further clinical decision-making for high-risk patients.Materials and methods: This case-control study included 172 patients with CM recurrence (high-risk group) and 30 patients with stable remission (low-risk group) three years after primary diagnosis. The impact of sex, age at diagnosis, anatomical site, histological characteristics (the histological type, pathological stage, ulceration; the depth of invasion, mitotic rate, lymphovascular invasion, neurotropism, association with a nevus, tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte density, tumor regression and BRAF codon 600 mutation status) on CM recurrence was evaluated.Results: Five independent variables, including nodal status, a high mitotic rate, Breslow thickness, lymphovascular invasion, perineural invasion and regression features were identified as the most significant. A 5-factor logistic regression model was developed to assess the risk of melanoma recurrence. The sensitivity and specificity of the model were 86.1% and 72.7%, respectively.Conclusions: The developed model, which relies on routine histological features, allows the identification of individuals at high risk of CM recurrence to tailor their further management.

    Keywords: cutaneous melanoma, BRAF mutations, Histological subtype, Recurrence, Prognostic model

    Received: 10 Dec 2024; Accepted: 20 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Dudin, Mintser, Gurianov, Kobyliak, Kozakov, Livshun and Sulaieva. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Oksana Sulaieva, Medical Laboratory CSD, Kyiv, Ukraine

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.