Metabolomics of primary cutaneous melanoma and matched adjacent extratumoral microenvironment

Background Melanoma causes the vast majority of deaths attributable to skin cancer, largely due to its propensity for metastasis. To date, few studies have examined molecular changes between primary cutaneous melanoma and adjacent putatively normal skin. To broaden temporal inferences related to initiation of disease, we performed a metabolomics investigation of primary melanoma and matched extratumoral microenvironment (EM) tissues; and, to make inferences about progressive disease, we also compared unmatched metastatic melanoma tissues to EM tissues. Methods Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry-based metabolic profiling was performed on frozen human tissues. Results We observed 824 metabolites as differentially abundant among 33 matched tissue samples, and 1,118 metabolites as differentially abundant between metastatic melanoma (n = 46) and EM (n = 34) after false discovery rate (FDR) adjustment (p