A melanoma subtype emerges from the shadows

Source: Drug Discovery News, April 2024

Unprotected exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun or other sources is a key risk factor for cutaneous melanoma, the most aggressive form of skin cancer. Having fair skin also increases the risk. The countries with the highest incidence of melanoma, including Australia, New Zealand, and Denmark, are largely composed of populations of European descent (1).

Daniela Robles-Espinoza, a bioinformatician studying skin cancer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, was familiar with the most prevalent UV-associated subtypes of cutaneous melanoma. She had studied their genetic basis at the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute as a graduate student and postdoctoral researcher. However, when she returned to Mexico, her native country, to establish her own lab, clinicians attending melanoma cases introduced her to a subtype she had not heard of before.

Colleagues told her that in Mexico, skin cancer was different. “People have many more different levels of pigmentation,” Robles-Espinoza recalled, and they spend fewer vacations in the sun. The most common subtype in Mexico is acral lentiginous melanoma (ALM).
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