Purpose: Uveal melanoma is the most common intraocular primary tumor, involving iris, ciliary body and choroid. More than 90% of the patients develop hepatic metastasis with an average survival time of 7 months. We have used formalin fixed paraffin embedded sections to validate the presence of monosomy 3, an accurate predictor of metastasis, chromosome 8 isochromosome (8q22), and 1p36 deletion. This study also tested the presence of oncomirs in uveal melanoma samples by microRNA (miRNA) expression profiling.
Methods: Chromogenic in situ hybridization (CISH) was performed in formalin fixed, paraffin embedded sections of uveal melanoma to analyze chromosome 1, 3, and 8 aberrations (n=60). MicroRNA (miRNA) expression profiling was done on paraffin sections of invasive tumor with liver metastasis (n=1) and non invasive tumor (n=1) in biological duplicates. Samples for miRNA expression profiling were identified based on case registry and the harboring of monosomy 3 by CISH.
Results: A significant correlation (p=0.05) between metastasizing and non-metastasizing melanoma harboring chromosomal aberrations- monosomy3, c-myc, and 1p36 was observed by Pearson's correlation. A significant correlation was observed in monosomy 3 and 1p36 positive cases in the tumor samples (p=0.039). No significance was observed between monosomy 3 and c-myc positive cases. No significance (p=0.096) was observed between c-myc amplification and trisomy (extra whole chromosome 8). MicroRNA expression profiling revealed the presence of 19 miRNAs expressed in non-metastasizing melanoma and absent in metastasizing melanoma. Eleven miRNAs were found to be expressed in metastasizing melanoma and absent in non-metastasizing melanoma. Genes targeted by the miRNAs were found to be present in chromosomal regions 8p22, 13q, and 17p but were often found to be deleted.
Conclusions: This technique can be applied to routine pathology using archival specimens to identify patients with monosomy 3. We were able to perform CISH in all the cases except the heavily pigmented tumors, where dots were observed but were not assessed. Initial studies on microRNA have revealed their role as oncomirs in both metastasizing and non-metastasizing melanomas. Further studies may provide insights into their role in tumor progression and facilitate metastatic phenotype analysis.