Marjolin's ulcer (MU) is a rare and aggressive cutaneous malignancy that typically presented in an area of traumatized or chronically inflamed skin and particularly in burn scars. Among them, the MU in the scalp with extensive invasion of the skull is exceptional and severe. The principle of management for MU is to obtain an early diagnosis and perform prompt surgical interventions. The invasive capacity of MU may vary among different sites of the scalp, which may require different therapeutic strategies for surgical excision. However, no clear evidence has been provided to determine the invasion ability of MU at different regions of the lesion as a surgical guidance. In present study, a 41-year-old female with a 40-year history of scalp ulceration has been examined. After resection of the MU lesion, hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining was performed to confirm the pathology of the cutaneous malignancy after surgical excision. Furthermore, reverse transcription-quantitative PCR experiment was performed out to determine the expression levels of invasion-associated biomarkers at different sites of the scalp affected by MU. Pathological analysis with H&E staining indicated a differentiated squamous cell carcinoma with invasion of the skull. The invasion-associated biomarkers were highly expressed in the core region compared to the middle region as well as the edge of MU tissue. Taken together, the present study suggests that the expression pattern of invasion-associated biomarkers varies between different regions of the MU lesion. High expression levels in the core region of MU indicates that the resection of the center area may be critical for the successful surgical treatment of MU.
Keywords: cell adhesion; cell signaling pathways; head Marjolin's ulcer; tumor invasion; tumor microenvironment.
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