AUTHOR=Tang Diana Y. L. , Ellis Robert A. , Lovat Penny E. TITLE=Prognostic Impact of Autophagy Biomarkers for Cutaneous Melanoma JOURNAL=Frontiers in Oncology VOLUME=6 YEAR=2016 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2016.00236 DOI=10.3389/fonc.2016.00236 ISSN=2234-943X ABSTRACT=
Prognosis and survival for malignant melanoma is highly dependent on early diagnosis and treatment. While the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) criterion provides a means of staging melanomas and guiding treatment approaches, it is unable to identify the risk of disease progression of early stage tumors or provide reliable stratification for novel adjuvant therapies. The demand for credible prognostic/companion biomarkers able to identify high-risk melanoma subgroups as well as guide more effective personalized/precision-based therapy is therefore of paramount importance. Autophagy, the principle lysosomal-mediated process for the degradation/recycling of cellular debris, is a hot topic in cancer medicine, and observations of its deregulation in melanoma have brought its potential as a prognostic biomarker to the forefront of current research. Key regulatory proteins, including Atg8/microtubule-associated light chain 3 (LC3) and BECN1 (Beclin 1), have been proposed as potential prognostic biomarkers. However, given the dynamic nature of autophagy, their expression