The treatment and management of patients with metastatic melanoma have evolved considerably in the “era” of personalized medicine. Melanoma was one of the first solid tumors to benefit from immunotherapy; life expectancy for patients in advanced stage of disease has improved. However, many progresses have yet to be made considering the (still) high number of patients who do not respond to therapies or who suffer adverse events. In this scenario, precision medicine appears fundamental to direct the most appropriate treatment to the single patient and to guide towards treatment decisions. The recent multi-omics analyses (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, radiomics, etc.) and the technological evolution of data interpretation have allowed to identify and understand several processes underlying the biology of cancer; therefore, improving the tumor clinical management. Specifically, these approaches have identified new pharmacological targets and potential biomarkers used to predict the response or adverse events to treatments. In this review, we will analyze and describe the most important omics approaches, by evaluating the methodological aspects and progress in melanoma precision medicine.

Various noninvasive techniques (dermoscopy, confocal microscopy, etc.) have been introduced to help the clinical diagnosis in nonmelanoma skin cancer. Among them, the high definition video thermographic technique (VTG) has recently been proposed. The aim of this study is to define the VTG patterns, respectively of actinic keratosis (AK) and basal cell carcinoma (BCC), and to compare these data with them of dermoscopy. The study included 36 patients with a total number of 135 lesions who underwent clinical, VTG, and dermoscopic examination. The VTG showed the presence of a hyperthermic pattern in all the cases of AK, while in the case of the BCC, the pattern was hypothermic. Dermoscopy also showed distinct pattern for AK and for BCC, but in 22% of them the data were not conclusive. Our study permits us to define two specific VTG patterns, BCC and AK respectively.

Advanced malignant melanoma represents a public health matter due to its rising incidence and aggressiveness. Novel therapies such as immunotherapy are showing promising results with improved progression free and overall survival in melanoma patients. However, novel targeted and immunotherapies could generate atypical patterns of response which are nowadays a big challenge since imaging criteria (ie Recist 1.1) have not been proven to be always reliable to assess response. Radiomics and in particular texture analysis (TA) represent new quantitative methodologies which could reduce the impact of these limitations providing most robust data in support of clinical decision process. The aim of this paper was to review the state of the art of radiomics/TA when it is applied to the imaging of metastatic melanoma patients.

At skin level, a cancerization field (CF) indicates some chronically photoexposed areas in which, besides a primary tumor, histological or biomolecular modifications without clinical signs are present. Active telethermography (ATT) allows us to observe the imaging of a hyperthermic halo (HH) surrounding the tumor . The Authors hypothesize HH as a possible expression of CF. The aim of this study were to verify whether HHs have the same histological or immunohistochemical characteristics as the CF and, secondly, to evaluate the efficacy of a device containing the enzyme photolyase in modifying thermographic parameters in these area. The study included 30 patients affected by actinic keratosis, evaluated clinically and by ATT at time 0 and after 3, 6 and 9 months. The ATT showed the presence of HHs in all the patients and, after the treatment, a significant modification of both the extension of these areas and the thermal parameters. In 5 patients for whom, while operated, two other biopsies were performed, respectively on the HH and on a perilesional non-hyperthermic area, in the HH, we detected a p53 and Ki 67 over-expression. Our results indicate that ATT could represent a useful paraclinic method in identifying CFs in subjects at risk.