Metabolic reprogramming is common in various cancers. Targeting metabolism to treat tumors is a hot research topic at present. Among them, changes in glucose metabolism in cancer have been widely studied. The Warburg effect maintains a high metabolic level in the tumor, accompanied by changes in glucose transporters. The transmembrane transport of sugar was previously thought to be mediated by SGLT and GLUT. Recently, the Solute Carrier Family(SLC) 45 family may be the third sugar transporter. But the role and value of the SLC45 family in melanoma, a highly malignant skin tumor, is unclear. Our study found that the four members of the SLC45 family, SLC45A1-SLC45A4, were differentially expressed in melanoma, but only SLC45A2 and SLC45A3 had prognostic guiding values. Further analysis revealed that the co-expression patterns of SLC45A2 and SLC45A3 were enriched in multiple metabolic pathways, suggesting their potential role in melanoma. In addition, SLC45A2 and SLC45A3 are also associated with immune cell infiltration. In conclusion, SLC45A2 and SLC45A3 are good prognostic indicators for melanoma and have guiding value for the treatment of melanoma in the future.

Melanoma is a type of cancer with a relatively poor prognosis. The development of immunotherapy for the treatment of patients with melanoma has drawn considerable attention in recent years. It is of great clinical significance to identify novel promising prognostic biomarkers and to explore their roles in the immune microenvironment. The solute carrier (SLC) superfamily is a group of transporters predominantly expressed on the cell membrane and are involved in substance transport. SLC16A1 is a member of the SLC family, participating in the transport of lactate, pyruvate, amino acids, ketone bodies, etc. The role of SLC16A1 in tumor immunity has been recently elucidated, while its role in melanoma remains unclear. In this study, bioinformatics analysis was performed to explore the role of SLC16A1 in melanoma. The results showed that high SLC16A1 expression was correlated with decreased overall survival in patients with melanoma. The genes co-expressed with SLC16A1 were significantly enriched in metabolic regulation, protein ubiquitination, and substance localization. Moreover, SLC16A1 was correlated with the infiltration of immune cells. In conclusion, SLC16A1 is a robust prognostic biomarker for melanoma and may be used as a novel target in immunotherapy.

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