Department of Molecular and Clinical Cancer Medicine, Institute of Molecular, Systems and Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
Department of Engineering, Institute of Risk and Uncertainty, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2022 Mar 2;11(3):32. doi: 10.1167/tvst.11.3.32.
Prognostic predictors in uveal melanoma (UM) consist of clinical, histomorphologic, and genetic features. Vascular lakes (VLs) are immature blood vessels within UM with unknown significance for metastatic risk.
A clinically well-phenotyped cohort of 136 hematoxylin and eosin-stained slides of UM enucleation specimens were retrospectively analyzed on scanned whole-slide images. These were annotated for VL in QuPath, assessing VL number and area. Using SPSS (V27.0), the Mann-Whitney U test and Cox regression were applied to evaluate whether there was any correlation between VL number and area within the tumor (VL-TA) compared with other prognostic parameters and patient survival times.
UMs with monosomy 3 (M3) have significant differences in their VL numbers (P = 0.008) and VL-TA ratios (P = 0.002) compared with disomy 3-UM. Nuclear BAP1-negative (nBAP1-) UMs have significant differences in their VL-TA ratio (P = 0.002) compared to nBAP1+ UMs. Survival times of patients with UM with epithelioid-celled tumors varied depending on their VL-TA ratio (P = 0.057). Similarly, in M3-UM, significant differences in survival (P = 0.009) were seen in patients, depending on VL number. Finally, patients with UM with shorter overall survival showed significant differences in their tumor VL-TA ratios (P = 0.043) and the number of VLs present (P = 0.002) than patients with UM who had longer survival.
Our pilot data suggest that VL-TA is an additional poor prognostic parameter in UM.
Digital analysis of UM can be easily performed to assess various prognostic parameters. Our pilot study demonstrates that UM-VL could be combined with other parameters to determine metastatic risk of patients with UM.
葡萄膜黑色素瘤（UM）的预后预测因素包括临床、组织形态学和遗传特征。血管湖（VL）是 UM 内未成熟的血管，其对转移风险的意义尚不清楚。
回顾性分析了 136 例 UM 眼内容剜除标本的苏木精和伊红染色幻灯片的临床表型良好的队列，这些标本在扫描全玻片图像上进行了注释，以评估 QuPath 中的 VL 数量和面积。使用 SPSS（V27.0），应用 Mann-Whitney U 检验和 Cox 回归评估肿瘤内 VL 数量（VL-TA）与其他预后参数和患者生存时间之间是否存在相关性。
与三倍体 UM（M3）相比，单体型 3（M3）UM 的 VL 数量（P=0.008）和 VL-TA 比值（P=0.002）存在显著差异。核 BAP1 阴性（nBAP1-）UM 的 VL-TA 比值与 nBAP1+ UM 存在显著差异（P=0.002）。具有上皮样细胞肿瘤的 UM 患者的生存时间取决于其 VL-TA 比值（P=0.057）。同样，在 M3-UM 中，根据 VL 数量，患者的生存时间也存在显著差异（P=0.009）。最后，总生存期较短的 UM 患者的肿瘤 VL-TA 比值（P=0.043）和存在的 VL 数量（P=0.002）与总生存期较长的 UM 患者存在显著差异。
我们的初步数据表明，VL-TA 是 UM 的另一个不良预后参数。
本研究表明，UM-VL 可与其他参数相结合，以确定 UM 患者的转移风险。
