Work

BAG3 protein expression in melanoma metastatic lymph nodes correlates with patients’ survival

Year: 2014

Type: article

Abstract: Patients diagnosed with stage III melanoma with clinically evident regional lymph node (LN) metastasis can differ significantly in disease outcome. This significant variability (24–70% 5-year survival) to some extent is likely due to known prognostic factors but is also related to tumor heterogeneity in the expression of specific genes. 1 The first-line therapy is generally represented by therapeutic LN dissection (TLND), and the current approaches to stratify patients with this stage of disease predominantly involve clinical and histological parameters 2 such as number of positive LN and extracapsular extension. However, these factors do not completely account for the disease outcome and the identification of novel molecular biomarkers could help to better categorize the heterogeneity of stage III melanoma tumors.

Source: Cell Death and Disease

DOI: 10.1038/cddis.2014.143