Progress in Understanding Complexity and Determinants of Immune-Related Prognostic Subsets in Primary Melanoma.

Gene signatures are increasingly being used to infer the immune composition of the tumor microenvironment. This strategy holds the promise for earlier detection, identification of patients at higher risk of progression, and for understanding therapeutic response and resistance to immunotherapy. This gene signature approach is now being integrated with information from genomic changes, gene networks, and master immunoregulatory genes, and this development can lead to identify the main determinants shaping the tumor immune landscape. A study in this issue of Cancer Research indicates a way forward to discover prognostic immune-related subsets in primary melanoma and to understand major determinants impairing protective immunity in early stage of disease. See related article by Poźniak et al., p. 2684 .
(©2019 American Association for Cancer Research.)