黑色素瘤占皮肤癌相关死亡率的大部分，这突出表明需要更好地了解黑色素瘤的发生和进展。对全组织活检中肿瘤性黑素细胞的深入分子分析可能会因炎症浸润而被稀释，这可能会掩盖肿瘤细胞特有的基因特征。因此，需要一种方法来从有限的原发性黑色素瘤样本中精确揭示肿瘤细胞特有的分子变化。在这里，我们对患者来源的色素性病变和原发性皮肤黑色素瘤的冰冻切片进行了激光捕获显微切割 (LCM) 和基因表达谱分析。与大量组织分析相比，对 LCM 衍生样品的分析发现了 9528 个额外的差异表达基因 (DEG)，包括黑素细胞特异性基因，如 PMEL 和 TYR，以及丰富的与细胞增殖相关的途径。 LCM 方法还鉴定了大量组织分析未检测到的黑色素瘤细胞特异性潜在靶向激酶。综上所述，我们的数据表明，根据样品分离方法，基因表达谱存在显着差异。我们发现 LCM 捕获了黑色素瘤相关基因的较高表达，而全组织活检发现了更广泛的炎症标志物。总而言之，我们的数据表明，LCM 是一种使用相对少量的原发性患者黑色素瘤样本来识别黑色素瘤特异性变化的有效方法。© 2023 作者。色素细胞

Melanoma accounts for the majority of skin cancer-related mortality, highlighting the need to better understand melanoma initiation and progression. In-depth molecular analysis of neoplastic melanocytes in whole tissue biopsies may be diluted by inflammatory infiltration, which may obscure gene signatures specific to neoplastic cells. Thus, a method is needed to precisely uncover molecular changes specific to tumor cells from a limited sample of primary melanomas. Here, we performed laser capture microdissection (LCM) and gene expression profiling of patient-derived frozen sections of pigmented lesions and primary cutaneous melanoma. Compared to bulk tissue analysis, analysis of LCM-derived samples identified 9528 additional differentially expressed genes (DEGs) including melanocyte-specific genes like PMEL and TYR, with enriched of pathways related to cell proliferation. LCM methodology also identified potentially targetable kinases specific to melanoma cells that were not detected by bulk tissue analysis. Taken together, our data demonstrate that there are marked differences in gene expression profiles depending on the method of sample isolation. We found that LCM captured higher expression of melanoma-related genes while whole tissue biopsy identified a wider range of inflammatory markers. Taken together, our data demonstrate that LCM is a valid approach to identify melanoma-specific changes using a relatively small amount of primary patient-derived melanoma sample.© 2023 The Authors. Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.