Case report
Detection of Disseminated Melanoma Cells by Reverse-Transcription – Polymerase Chain Reaction
Ivan Šamija
Josip Lukač
Zvonko Kusić
Mirna Šitum
Mirko Šamija
Abstract
Detection of circulating melanoma cells by reverse transcriptase – polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is a molecular
diagnostic procedure which is used to predict prognosis in melanoma patients. The most widely used specific marker for
detection of circulating melanoma cells by RT-PCR is expression of tyrosinase gene. This procedure has shown high specificity
and low threshold for detection of melanoma cells. Most of the studies have shown that prognosis is worse in patients
in which circulating melanoma cells were detected. Detection of circulating melanoma cells has been studied also
as a marker for predicting response to therapy. The clinical value of this procedure is limited by the proportion of patients
with clinically confirmed distant metastases being tyrosinase negative in almost all the studies. Studies have shown that
analysis of additional markers to tyrosinase enables detection of circulating melanoma cells in a higher percentage of
melanoma patients. RT-PCR has shown a lower threshold for detection than other methods (immunohistochemistry) in
detection of melanoma metastases in lymph nodes.
Keywords
melanoma; neoplasm circulating cells; neoplasm metastasis; reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction; tumor markers – biological
Hrčak ID:
26990
URI
Publication date:
3.12.2007.
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