Bioinformatics Seminar
Time: 3PM
Venue: Davis Auditorium and Online
10 September 2024
This is a WEHI only event.Characterizing the Tumor and Microenvironment in Early-Stage Melanoma with extreme clinical behaviour using 10X Visium
Marie TrussartWEHI Bioinformatics
Australia has the highest incidence of melanoma in the world, almost 9 times the global average. It is particularly prevalent among young Australians aged 20-39. Early-stage melanoma accounts for the largest proportion of new melanoma diagnoses. Although these have an excellent chance of cure with surgery alone, 25% of melanoma deaths originate from thin (≤1mm, T1) patients who develop recurrent melanoma within 10 years. This highlights an urgent need to identify T1 patients at high risk of recurrence, but the underlying molecular characteristics of these cases remain largely unexplored. Our research utilizes the 10X Visium spatial transcriptomics platform to investigate the tumor and its microenvironment in early-stage melanoma. This presentation will introduce our project goals and share preliminary exploratory data analysis of two groups of stage I primary melanoma patients with unexpected outcomes: thin T1 with rapid recurrence and thick (≥4mm depth) T4 with no recurrence. In this talk, I will present our initial findings focusing on the identification of cell types within the tumor samples, the characterization of spatial region architecture and preliminary patterns observed using Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF). In the future, we will explore how these spatial patterns relate to patient outcomes, especially the risk of melanoma recurrence in early-stage cases.