Uveal melanoma (UM) represents the most frequent primary tumor of the eye.,Despite the development of new drugs and screening programs, the prognosis of patients with UM remains poor and no effective prognostic biomarkers are yet able to identify high-risk patients.,Therefore, in the present study, microRNA (miRNA or miR) expression data, contained in the TCGA UM (UVM) database, were analyzed in order to identify a set of miRNAs with prognostic significance to be used as biomarkers in clinical practice.,Patients were stratified into 2 groups, including tumor stage (high-grade vs. low-grade) and status (deceased vs. alive); differential analyses of miRNA expression among these groups were performed.,A total of 20 deregulated miRNAs for each group were identified.,In total 7 miRNAs were common between the groups.,The majority of common miRNAs belonged to the miR-506-514 cluster, known to be involved in UM development.,The prognostic value of the 20 selected miRNAs related to tumor stage was assessed.,The deregulation of 12 miRNAs (6 upregulated and 6 downregulated) was associated with a worse prognosis of patients with UM.,Subsequently, miRCancerdb and microRNA Data Integration Portal bioinformatics tools were used to identify a set of genes associated with the 20 miRNAs and to establish their interaction levels.,By this approach, 53 different negatively and positively associated genes were identified.,Finally, DIANA-mirPath prediction pathway and Gene Ontology enrichment analyses were performed on the lists of genes previously generated to establish their functional involvement in biological processes and molecular pathways.,All the miRNAs and genes were involved in molecular pathways usually altered in cancer, including the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway.,Overall, the findings of the presents study demonstrated that the miRNAs of the miR-506-514 cluster, hsa-miR-592 and hsa-miR-199a-5p were the most deregulated miRNAs in patients with high-grade disease compared to those with low-grade disease and were strictly related to the overall survival (OS) of the patients.,However, further in vitro and translational approaches are required to validate these preliminary findings.
To assess clinical characteristics, treatment and survival of patients with uveal melanoma in China.,The retrospective study included all patients with malignant uveal melanoma who were consecutively examined in the study period from January 2005 and June 2015 in the Beijing Tongren hospital.,The mean age of the 582 patients (295(50.7%) women) was 44.6±12.6 years (range:5-77 years).,The tumors were located most often in the superior temporal region (in 117(21.5%) patients) and least common in the inferior region (in 31(5.7%) patients).,In 548(94.2%) patients, the tumors were located in the choroid, in 33(5.7%) patients in the ciliary body, and in one (0.2%) patient in the iris.,Treatment included episcleral brachytherapy (415(71.3%) patients), local tumor resection (48(8.2%) patients) and primary enucleation (119(20.4%) patients).,In 53 individuals out of the 415 patients with primary brachytherapy, episcleral brachytherapy was followed by enucleation, due to an increasing tumor size or due to uncontrolled neovascular glaucoma.,Median follow-up time was of 30 months (range: 1-124 months; mean: 34.8 ± 24.4 months).,Overall survival rate at 5 and 10 years was of 92.7% and 85.1%.,Younger age (P = 0.017), tumor location in the nasal meridian(P = 0.004), smaller tumor size (P<0.001), hemispheric tumor shape (P = 0.025), histological tumor cell type (spindle-cell type versus epitheloid cell type;P = 0.014), and type of treatment (episcleral brachytherapy versus local tumor resection and versus primary enucleation; P<0.001) were significantly associated with the overall survival in univariate analysis, while in multivariate analysis only smaller tumor size was significantly (P<0.001; RR: 4.75; 95% confidence interval:2.11,10.7) associated with better overall survival.,In this study on clinical characteristics of uveal melanoma of a larger group of patients from China, the onset age was considerably younger and survival rate better than in studies from Western countries.,Tumor size was the most significant factor for survival.