SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with melanoma: results of the Spanish Melanoma Group registry.

BACKGROUND: The Spanish Melanoma Group (GEM) developed a national registry of patients with melanoma infected by SARS-CoV-2 ("GRAVID"). METHODS: The main objective was to describe the COVID-19 fatality rate in patients with melanoma throughout the pandemic, as well as to explore the effect of melanoma treatment and tumor stage on the risk of COVID-19 complications. These are the final data of the register, including cases from February 2020 to September 2021. RESULTS: One hundred-fifty cases were registered. Median age was 68 years (range 6-95), 61 (40%) patients were females, and 63 (42%) patients had stage IV. Thirty-nine (26%) were on treatment with immunotherapy, and 17 (11%) with BRAF-MEK inhibitors. COVID-19 was resolved in 119 cases, including 85 (57%) patients cured, 15 (10%) that died due to melanoma, and 20 (13%) that died due to COVID-19. Only age over 60 years, cardiovascular disorders, and diabetes mellitus increased the risk of death due to COVID-19, but not advanced melanoma stage nor melanoma systemic therapies. Three waves have been covered by the register: February-May 2020, August-November 2020, and December 2020-April 2021. The first wave had the highest number of registered cases and COVID-19 mortality. CONCLUSION: Tumor stage or melanoma treatments are non-significant prognostic factors for COVID-19 mortality. During the pandemic in Spain there was a downward trend in the number of patients registered across the waves, as well as in the severity of the infection. GOV IDENTIFIER: NCT04344002.

Whole exome sequencing identifies PLEC, EXO5 and DNAH7 as novel susceptibility genes in testicular cancer.

Testicular germ cell tumors (TGCTs) are a clinically and pathologically heterogeneous disease, and little is known of its genetic basis. Only low susceptibility risk loci have been identified for both sporadic and familial cases. Therefore, we tried to identify new susceptibility genes responsible for familial testicular cancer that may contribute to increasing our knowledge about the genetic basis of the disease. Nineteen Spanish families with at least two affected individuals with TGCT were selected. WES was performed on those individuals using an Illumina Hiseq2000 sequencing platform. Data were analyzed under a monogenic and polygenic model of inheritance, and candidate variants were evaluated in a case-control association study performed on 391 Spanish sporadic cases and 1,170 healthy Spanish controls. Results were replicated in a second series consisting of 101 TGCTs from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TGCA) and 27,000 controls from the Exome Aggregation Consortium (ExAC) database. Logistic regression was carried out to analyze the association strength (risk) of candidate variants obtained among cases and controls in different populations. Despite the sample size, we detected a significant earlier age of onset in familial TGCT (28y) than sporadic cases (33y), using a Mann-Whitney U test. We identified significant variants in the comparative study of TGCT cases (391) versus controls (almost 1,170), and three of them [PLEC (OR = 6.28, p = 6.42 × 10-23 ) (p.Arg2016Trp), EXO5 (OR = 3.37, p = 4.82 × 10-09 ) (p.Arg344AlafsTer10) and DNAH7 (OR = 1.64, p = 0.048)] were replicated as potential candidates that may contribute to explaining the genetic basis of TGCT.