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Dissecting melanocytes to predict melanoma

Nature Cell Biology volume 23, pages 930–931 (2021)Cite this article

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With advanced high-throughput technologies, scientists can now use transcriptional signatures to study melanocytes as they become cancer. A new study identifies transcriptional programs at single-cell resolution across platforms and species, which enables prediction of melanoma prognosis and response to immune-checkpoint inhibitor therapy.

Melanocytes develop from embryonic neural crest cells, which differentiate into melanoblasts and mature into melanin-producing dendritic melanocytes of the skin. These developmental stages have been well characterized in many model organisms, including mouse, chick and zebrafish. Despite the largely conserved nature of melanocyte development, species-specific differences exist, and the precise transcriptional programs present in developing human melanocytes is ill defined. Since its conception in 2009 (ref. 2), scRNA-seq has been used extensively to identify gene-expression signatures of individual cells in a variety of organisms and contexts. Although scRNA-seq has been previously performed on normal human skin, those studies focused on abundant cell types such as keratinocytes and fibroblasts3,4.

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Fig. 1: Melanoma subtypes categorised by transcriptional signature.

BioRender.com.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stem Cell Program and Division of Hematology/Oncology, Children’s Hospital Boston, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    Alicia M. McConnell & Leonard I. Zon

  2. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Alicia M. McConnell & Leonard I. Zon

  3. Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Leonard I. Zon

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  1. Alicia M. McConnell
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  2. Leonard I. Zon
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Correspondence to Leonard I. Zon.

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McConnell, A.M., Zon, L.I. Dissecting melanocytes to predict melanoma. Nat Cell Biol 23, 930–931 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-021-00748-0

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