Figure 6

MIF expression increases during progression of melanocytic lesions to advanced stage melanoma. (A) Levels of MIF mRNA expression are compared in two normal skin tissue samples (NS1; NS2), benign naevi (BN1; BN2), atypical naevi (AN1; AN2), melanomas in situ (in situ1; in situ2), VGP melanomas (VGP1; VGP2), MGP melanomas (MGP1; MGP2), and the three MGP melanoma-positive lymph nodes (LN1; LN2; LN3). Data represent normalised levels extracted from GEO dataset GSE4587. (B) Average MIF expression levels were higher in “advanced stage” samples compared to the “early stage” samples (mean +/-S.E.M. of early stage (n = 8) and advanced stage (n = 7) from (A), **p < 0.01 using the Mann–Whitney test). (C/D) Frequency distribution histograms of MIF transcript expression in tissues of primary melanoma or metastatic melanoma. Analyses were conducted on expression microarray data (GEO dataset GSE8401) from melanoma tissues of patients with progressive disease collected as 31 cases of primary melanoma (C) and 52 cases of metastatic melanoma (D). (E) Analysis of MIF expression data from (C) and (D) shows the levels are higher in metastatic melanoma compared to primary melanoma samples. (Values are mean +/-S.E.M. from primary and metastatic melanoma cases respectively, **p < 0.01 using the Mann–Whitney test).