VCAN and melanoma: Most interestingly, we found that many of the genes we have previously identified as upregulated in melanoma lymph node metastases [35, 46] were already upregulated in metastatic primary tumors, including SPP1 and CTHRC1 as well as the ECM protein-encoding genes VCAN, LGALS1, and FN1. Among these, we further found that SPP1, CTHRC1, LGALS1, and, most significantly, FN1 mRNA correlated with a poor survival (Table 2, Supplementary Figure S1, and data not shown), although these results must be validated in a larger data set.