Diaz, Michael J.Fadil, AngelaTran, Jasmine T.Batchu, SaiRoot, Kevin T.Tran, Andrew X.Lucke-Wold, Brandon2023-10-182023-10-182023-01-08Diaz MJ, Fadil A, Tran JT, et al. Primary and Metastatic Cutaneous Melanomas Discriminately Enrich Several Ligand-Receptor Interactions. Life (Basel). 2023;13(1):180. Published 2023 Jan 8. doi:10.3390/life13010180https://hdl.handle.net/1805/36462Introduction: Cutaneous melanoma remains a leading cancer with sobering post-metastasis mortality rates. To date, the ligand-receptor interactome of melanomas remains weakly studied despite applicability to anti-cancer drug discovery. Here we leverage established crosstalk methodologies to characterize important ligand-receptor pairs in primary and metastatic cutaneous melanoma. Methods: Bulk transcriptomic data, representing 470 cutaneous melanoma samples, was retrieved from the Broad Genome Data Analysis Center Firehose portal. Tumor and stroma compartments were computationally derived as a function of tumor purity estimates. Identification of preferential ligand-receptor interactions was achieved by relative crosstalk scoring of 1380 previously established pairs. Results: Metastatic cutaneous melanoma uniquely enriched PTH2-PTH1R for tumor-to-stroma signaling. The Human R-spondin ligand family was involved in 4 of the 15 top-scoring stroma-to-tumor interactions. Receptor ACVR2B was involved in 3 of the 15 top-scoring tumor-to-tumor interactions. Conclusions: Numerous gene-level differences in ligand-receptor crosstalk between primary and metastatic cutaneous melanomas. Further investigation of notable pairings is warranted.en-USAttribution 4.0 InternationalCutaneous melanomaInteractomeLigand-receptorOmicsTranscriptomeArticle