

Skin cutaneous melanoma (SKCM) is one of the most deadly types of skin cancers as well as one of the most life-threatening malignancies damaging human health. Our study may provide novel insights for the selection of prognostic biomarkers for melanoma. Furthermore, we found some correlations among the expression of KRTs and the infiltration of immune cells. GSEA analysis indicated that the most involved hallmarks pathways were P53 pathway, KRAS signaling, estrogen response early and estrogen response late. Survival analysis revealed that the high transcription levels of KRT1/5/6/14/15/16/17 were associated with low overall survival in melanoma patients. The expression levels of KRT1/2/5/6/10/14/15/16/17 were correlated with advanced tumor stage.


We found that the mRNA levels of KRT1/2/5/6/8/10/14/15/16/17 were significantly differential expressed between primary melanoma and metastatic melanoma. In the current study, we examined the transcriptional and clinical data of KRTs in patients with melanoma from GEO, TCGA, ONCOMINE, GEPIA, cBioPortal, TIMER and TISIDB databases. However, the diverse expression patterns and prognostic values of KRTs in melanoma have yet to be elucidated. Keratins ( KRTs), the intermediate filament-forming proteins of epithelial cells, are extensively used as diagnostic biomarkers in cancers and associated with tumorigenesis and metastasis in multiple cancers.
