Malignant melanoma is the most aggressive type of skin cancer and currentlyaccounts formore than 160.000 new cancer cases worldwide every year. Incidence ofmalignantmelanoma is rapidly increasing - with a doubling rate of 10-20 years and adeath rate of 11%.However, the molecular mechanisms underlying melanoma progression are largelyunknown,and target-specific therapies are lacking. The existing tumor, node,metastasis-based stagingsystem is in adequate to provide a precise prognosis for all patients. Thepresent inventionrelates to the field of oncology, more particularly to methods of predictingclinical outcomein malignant melanoma, which comprise determining the expression level of oneor moreprognostic RNA transcripts in a sample via their corresponding cDNAs, whereintheprognostic transcript is the transcript of one or more genes selected from thegroup consistingof KRT9, KBTBD10, and SPINK7/ECG2.
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