The incidence of melanoma among those of an Asian ethnicity is lower than in Caucasians; few large‐scale Asian studies that include follow‐up data have been reported.,To investigate the clinical characteristics of Japanese patients with melanoma and to evaluate the prognostic factors.,Detailed patient information was collected from the database of Japanese Melanoma Study Group of the Japanese Skin Cancer Society.,The American Joint Committee on Cancer seventh Edition system was used for TNM classification.,The Kaplan‐Meier method and Cox proportional hazards model were used to estimate the impact of clinical and histological parameters on disease‐specific survival in patients with invasive melanoma.,In total, 4594 patients were included in this analysis.,The most common clinical type was acral lentiginous melanoma (40.4%) followed by superficial spreading melanoma (20.5%), nodular melanoma (10.0%), mucosal melanoma (9.5%), and lentigo maligna melanoma (8.1%).,The 5‐year disease‐specific survival for each stage was as follows: IA = 98.0%, IB = 93.9%, IIA = 94.8%, IIB = 82.4%, IIC = 71.8%, IIIA = 75.0%, IIIB = 61.3%, IIIC = 41.7%, and IV = 17.7%.,Although multivariate analysis showed that clinical classifications were not associated with survival across all stages, acral type was an independent poor prognostic factor in stage IIIA.,Our study revealed the characteristics of melanoma in the Japanese population.,The 5‐year disease‐specific survival of each stage showed a similar trend to that of Caucasians.,While clinical classification was not associated with survival in any stages, acral type was associated with poor survival in stage IIIA.,Our result might indicate the aggressiveness of acral type in certain populations.
The development and progression of melanoma have been attributed to independent or combined genetic and epigenetic events.,There has been remarkable progress in understanding melanoma pathogenesis in terms of genetic alterations.,However, recent studies have revealed a complex involvement of epigenetic mechanisms in the regulation of gene expression, including methylation, chromatin modification and remodeling, and the diverse activities of non-coding RNAs.,The roles of gene methylation and miRNAs have been relatively well studied in melanoma, but other studies have shown that changes in chromatin status and in the differential expression of long non-coding RNAs can lead to altered regulation of key genes.,Taken together, they affect the functioning of signaling pathways that influence each other, intersect, and form networks in which local perturbations disturb the activity of the whole system.,Here, we focus on how epigenetic events intertwine with these pathways and contribute to the molecular pathogenesis of melanoma.