The national Melanoma Prevention Working Group (MPWG) convened to develop guidelines on integration of gene expression profile (GEP) testing into the management of patients with cutaneous melanoma (JAMA Dermatol. 2020;156[9]:1004-1011. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2020.1729).
The group discussed the following:
- A review of published data using GEP tests
- Definition of acceptable performance criteria
- Current recommendations for use of GEP testing in clinical practice
- Considerations for future studies
The MPWG members believe that prognostic GEP testing will improve risk stratification and clinical decision-making but they identify limitations because of test performance in patients with stage 1 disease. Their findings were released in a consensus statement and included:
- Current published studies of GEP testing have not evaluated results sufficient enough to establish that the use of GEP testing will provide clinical value.
- Stage specific performance cannot be established because GEP tests are reported for small groups of patients representing particular tumor stages or in aggregate form.
- There are challenges with performing clinical trials incorporating GEP testing with current therapies.
- Retrospective studies that evaluate multiple GEP testing platforms on fully annotated archived samples are recommended.
“Before GEP testing is routinely used, the clinical benefit to the management of patients with melanoma must be established through further clinical investigation,” concluded Douglas Grossman, MD, PhD, Huntsman Cancer Institute, Salt Lake City, Utah and colleagues.—Lisa Kuhns
