MassARRAY revealed that 8 of 19 (42%) cases of conventional melanomas and none of the nevoid or spitzoid melanomas harbored hypermethylated CpG dinucleotides in the Upstream of the Transcription Start Site (UTSS) region of the TERT promoter (Supplementary Table 2); hypermethylation in this region has been shown to correlate with increased TERT expression and poorer patient outcome in a number of different cancers33. This evidence concerns the gene TERT and melanoma.