A diagnostic autoantibody signature for primary cutaneous melanoma

Abstract

// Pauline Zaenker 1 , Johnny Lo 2 , Robert Pearce 3 , Phillip Cantwell 3 , Lester Cowell 4 , Mark Lee 5 , Christopher Quirk 6 , Henry Law 7 , Elin Gray 1 and Mel Ziman 1, 8 1 School of Medical and Health Sciences, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, Perth, WA, Australia 2 School of Science, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, Perth, WA, Australia 3 Hollywood Specialist Centre, Hollywood Private Hospital, Nedlands, Perth, WA, Australia 4 Level 1 Melanoma, Fremantle, Perth, WA, Australia 5 St John of God Hospital, Subiaco, Perth, WA, Australia 6 Dermatology Specialist Group, Ardross, Perth, WA, Australia 7 Skin Check WA, Inglewood, Perth, WA, Australia 8 Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Perth, WA, Australia Correspondence to: Pauline Zaenker, email: p.zaenker@ecu.edu.au ; paulinez@our.ecu.edu.au Keywords: melanoma; diagnosis; autoantibody; microarray; biomarker Received: November 15, 2017      Accepted: June 04, 2018      Published: July 17, 2018 ABSTRACT Melanoma is an aggressive form of skin cancer that is curable by surgical excision in the majority of cases, if detected at an early stage. To improve early stage melanoma detection, the development of a highly sensitive diagnostic test is of utmost importance. Here we aimed to identify antibodies to a panel of tumour associated antigens that can differentiate primary melanoma patients and healthy individuals. A total of 245 sera from primary melanoma patients and healthy volunteers were screened against a high-throughput microarray platform containing 1627 functional proteins. Following rigorous statistical analysis, we identified a combination of 10 autoantibody biomarkers that, as a panel, displays a sensitivity of 79%, specificity of 84% and an AUC of 0.828 for primary melanoma detection. This melanoma autoantibody signature may prove valuable for the development of a diagnostic blood test for routine population screening that, when used in conjunction with current melanoma diagnostic techniques, could improve the early diagnosis of this malignancy and ultimately decrease the mortality rate of patients.