Refining Melanoma Treatment With Biomarker-Driven Insights

Source: Youtube, April 2025

Welcome back to the second episode of this discussion about biomarkers. The last time we were together, we discussed sensitivity and specificity and the importance of these two aspects in terms of biomarkers in melanoma. We also discussed what kind of characteristics an ideal biomarker would have [in order] for us to use it in a clinical practice.

Right now, for melanoma, the best biomarker that we have is the presence or absence of the BRAF mutation. For early-stage melanoma — which is the setting that we would like to discuss more in terms of biomarkers?— there are a couple of biomarkers that are currently being investigated and have been tested, mostly in retrospective analyses, that are tissue biomarkers, mostly gene expression profiles.

These gene expression profile tests use primary tumors to test different genes and combine the expression of these genes with either clinical or pathological information for the majority of them. Then, we have a score that classifies patients into high or low risk, depending on the expression of these biomarkers and in combination with other factors.
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