Identification of Potential Hub Genes and Pathways Predicting Pathogenesis in Skin Cutaneous Melanoma

Background: Malignant melanoma (MM) is one of the tumors with the worst prognosis among skin malignancies. However, its pathogenesis and potential therapeutic targets still need to be explored to a large extent.Methods: In the present study, we found three gene expression profiles and screened differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between melanoma and normal tissues. The DEGs were dealt with gene ontology (GO), Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG), protein–protein interaction (PPI), and survival analyses, while the connectivity map (CMap) database was used to predict candidate small molecules that may reverse the biological state of MMResults: we detected the expression of the most relevant core gene in vitro and checked the impact of the top predicted potential drug against the proliferation of MM cell lines. EXO1 were associated with unfavorable MM prognosis, ten hub genes were chose among the 77 up-regulated DEGs and 41 down-regulated DEGs, and three promising small molecule drugs for treating MM were identified. Simultaneously, we found that the highest predicted potential drug rifabutin significantly inhibits on the proliferation of melanoma cells and significantly reverses the expression of EXO1.In summary, the findings of the present study suggest that the ten hub genes and pathways identified may be closely related to MM pathogenesis.Conclusions: EXO1 overexpression could be a hopeful biomarker for revealing poor prognosis in patients with MM, while the rifabutin for the development of potential drugs to treat MM.