Interesting Results from Genomic Classification of Cutaneous Melanomas

The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project is an ambitious attempt to catalogue molecular changes in different types of cancers. These changes include genetic alterations (mutations and copy number variations) and changes in mRNA expression signatures, methylation patterns across the genome, and some proteomic analyses. The melanoma project was a monumental undertaking and has just been completed with some interesting results.

Overall, 333 primary or metastatic melanomas from 331 patients were analyzed for such signature changes. These results and findings from several earlier reports make clear that there are four large genomic groupings of melanomas: BRAF mutated, RAS mutated, NF1 mutated, and triple wildtype (WT; i.e., without mutations in th…