ABSTRACT
Uveal melanoma is the most common primary cancer of the eye and leads to metastatic death in up to half of affected individuals. Despite advances in treatment of the primary ocular tumor, there has not been a corresponding improvement in survival in uveal melanoma patients. By identifying patients with a high risk primary uveal melanoma at the time of ocular diagnosis, the possibility exists for prophylactic systemic treatment of these patients to delay or prevent the development of overt metastatic disease. Work is also underway to adapt gene expression profile to a non-invasive molecular imaging platform that can be used in the clinic to evaluate all patients with uveal melanocytic tumors without a fine needle biopsy. The first genetic factor that was found to be closely associated with metastasis in uveal melanoma was monosomy 3. Gene expression profiling has also shed new light on the biology of uveal melanoma metastasis.
