Researchers from the UGR and ibs.GRANADA develop a model to diagnose the most aggressive skin cancer early using liquid biopsy

Malignant melanoma (MM) is a type of cancer that affects the melanocytes of the skin and whose incidence has increased significantly in recent decades.

Although generally treatable when diagnosed early, the mortality rate increases dramatically when the disease is in an advanced stage.

A team of researchers from the UGR, the Biosanitary Research Institute of Granada (ibs.GRANADA) and the MNat_ Excellence Unit 'Modeling nature from nano to macro', in collaboration with the MEDINA Foundation, has developed a method that could improve significantly the early detection of melanoma, the most aggressive type of skin cancer. Researchers from the Virgen de las Nieves university hospitals and the San Cecilio Clinical Hospital in Granada have also participated in this multidisciplinary work.

Malignant melanoma (MM) is a type of cancer that affects the melanocytes of the skin and whose incidence has increased significantly in recent decades. In 2022 alone, 101.507 new cases were diagnosed throughout the European Union, with an estimated incidence of 11,9 cases per 100.000 people. Although MM is generally treatable when diagnosed early, the mortality rate increases dramatically when the disease is in an advanced stage. Early detection of MM remains a challenge, due to the lack of reproducibility and objectivity, which can worsen the prognosis.

In this sense, the study has proposed analyzing the blood serum of patients with melanoma, with the intention of finding metabolites that could be used to diagnose this disease early. To do this, a technique called untargeted metabolomics has been used, comparing patients in different stages of melanoma and healthy individuals. This method has allowed us to identify ten metabolites whose presence differed between both groups.

Three of these metabolites showed remarkable accuracy in predicting stage I malignant melanoma when incorporated as predictors into a monolayer neural network-based classification model, suggesting that they could be used as biomarkers for early detection of the disease. . The model has been validated in an independent sample of 12 patients, of which 100% were correctly identified.

"The results are very promising and could have a significant impact on the survival of patients with melanoma," says the professor at the Department of Human Anatomy and Embryology at the UGR and researcher in charge of the group. TEC16-Advanced Therapies: Differentiation, Regeneration and Cancer of the ibs.GRANADA, Juan Antonio Marchal Corrales, leader of the study. "Early diagnosis is crucial for the successful treatment of melanoma, and this new method could allow us to identify the disease at an earlier stage, when it is easier to treat, thus reducing the mortality rate."

The team of researchers emphasizes the need to validate these biomarkers in a larger study with a larger number of patients, which would allow this method to be implemented in the clinic in a reliable way. Furthermore, the early diagnosis model could be applied to other types of cancers, such as colon, breast or pancreatic cancer, where the relationship between changes in lipid levels (particularly phospholipids) and migration and metastasis has been previously demonstrated.

This study has been funded by the Carlos III Health Institute, the Doctores Galera y Requena Chair for Cancer Stem Cell Research at the University of Granada and by the MEDINA Foundation. The work has been carried out with internal funds.

About the research groups

The research group 'Advanced Therapies: differentiation, regeneration and cancer' at ibs.GRANADA, led by Juan Antonio Marchal Corrales, focuses its studies on two main axes: regenerative medicine and experimental oncology, from a translational and interdisciplinary perspective, with application in diagnosis and therapeutic use to benefit the health of patients with highly prevalent diseases, such as degenerative diseases and cancer. This multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary orientation is based on the use of knowledge in omics technologies, nanotechnology and nanomedicine. Some of its lines of research are the therapeutic application of adult stem and progenitor cells in pathologies, 3D bioprinting and development of bioinks and generation of natural and synthetic biomaterials with application to prevalent pathologies, the development of preclinical models for new useful treatments in medicine. regenerative and cancer, cancer gene therapy and CAR-T systems for solid tumors.

MEDINA Foundation's main objective is the research and development of innovative medicines, focusing especially on natural products. Within its research lines it has a group dedicated to the discovery of biomarkers through metabolomic approaches. Through a bioanalytical platform based on mass spectrometry, MEDINA has contributed to the discovery of new biomarkers in the areas of oncology, diabetes and infectious diseases.

Bibliographic reference:

Peña-Martín J, García-Ortega MB, Palacios-Ferrer JL, Díaz C, Ángel García M, Boulaiz H, Valdivia J, Jurado JM, Almazan-Fernandez FM, Arias Santiago S, Vicente F, Del Val C, Pérez Del Palacio J, Marchal JA. Identification of novel biomarkers for early diagnosis of malignant melanoma by untargeted LC-HRMS-based metabolomics: a pilot study. Br J Dermatol. 2024 Jan 12:ljae013. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjd/ljae013