Skip to main content
letter
. 2020 Jun 9;59(11):e431–e433. doi: 10.1111/ijd.14987

Figure 1.

Figure 1

The CP‐GEP model, which we refer to as the Merlin test, identifies patients with primary cutaneous melanoma who may forgo the sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNb) procedure because of their low risk of nodal metastasis. (a) The CP‐GEP model combines clinicopathologic variables, i.e. Breslow thickness and patient age, and the expression of eight genes. These genes serve biological functions in epithelial‐to‐mesenchymal transition (EMT) with specific roles in angiogenesis/hypoxia, coagulation, and melanosome biogenesis. (b) The Merlin test has the potential to reduce the sentinel lymph node biopsy rate by up to 80% for T1 disease and 42% for T2 disease. 1 In our pilot study, none of the negatively tested patients were found to have nodal metastasis.