About

Dr. Meg Rebecca Gerstenblith is a clinical associate in dermatology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She specializes in general dermatology and melanoma, with a focus on skin cancer detection and treatment. Dr. Gerstenblith received her medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 2004, where she also completed her dermatology residency in 2009. She is board-certified by the American Board of Dermatology since 2009. She has co-written over 35 peer-reviewed articles and more than 40 abstracts on dermatology and cutaneous oncology, contributing significantly to her field. Dr. Gerstenblith is known for her thorough, compassionate, and patient-centered approach, emphasizing clear communication, detailed examinations, and personalized care. Her expertise and dedication have earned her high praise from patients, who describe her as knowledgeable, caring, professional, and attentive to individual concerns.

Research topics

• Cancer research
• Genetics
• Medicine
• Internal medicine
• Biology
• Oncology
• Pathology
• Immunology

Selected publications

• Supplementary Data1 from Tumor miRNA Signatures Associate with Outcomes of Patients with Stage II/III Melanoma

  2025-12-15

  articleOpen access

  <p>Supplementary Tables</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Tumor miRNA Signatures Associate with Outcomes of Patients with Stage II/III Melanoma

  Clinical Cancer Research · 2025-10-20

  article

  PURPOSE: Patients with stage II and resected stage III melanomas have variable clinical outcomes, providing evidence of underlying biological differences in tumors and/or the patients themselves, beyond stage. The approval of adjuvant immunotherapy for stage IIB/C and resected stage III/IV disease (and adjuvant targeted therapy for resected stage III disease) has created a pressing need to develop biomarkers to accurately distinguish patients at low risk versus high risk for recurrence and death from melanoma. miRNAs are promising biomarkers because of their stability in tissues and fluids and their demonstrated functional and prognostic roles in melanoma. We hypothesized that miRNA expression could be integrated into prognostic models that would classify 5-year survival outcomes more accurately than clinical factors alone. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Using a NanoString miRNA Expression Assay, we analyzed 715 primary melanomas from patients with stage II or stage III disease within the InterMEL consortium and examined associations between miRNA expression and melanoma-specific death. RESULTS: When integrated into clinical prognostic models for 5-year melanoma-specific survival, miRNA signatures improved the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for patients in stage II from 0.71 for a "clinical factors-only" model to 0.81 for a "clinical plus miRNA" model in an independent test set, an improvement of 0.10 with a 95% confidence interval (0.03-0.19). The improvement was more modest for patients in stage III who were included in the analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Incorporating miRNA expression in primary melanomas may enhance the accuracy of clinical prognostic models and potentially aid in the selection of patients with melanoma for adjuvant treatment and clinical trials.

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Figures1 from Tumor miRNA Signatures Associate with Outcomes of Patients with Stage II/III Melanoma

  2025-12-15

  articleOpen access

  <p>Supplementary Figures S1-S9</p>

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• DNA Methylation Classes of Stage II and III Primary Melanomas and Their Clinical and Prognostic Significance

  JCO Precision Oncology · 2024-11-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  PURPOSE Patients with stage II and III cutaneous primary melanoma vary considerably in their risk of melanoma-related death. We explore the ability of methylation profiling to distinguish primary melanoma methylation classes and their associations with clinicopathologic characteristics and survival. MATERIALS AND METHODS InterMEL is a retrospective case-control study that assembled primary cutaneous melanomas from American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) 8th edition stage II and III patients diagnosed between 1998 and 2015 in the United States and Australia. Cases are patients who died of melanoma within 5 years from original diagnosis. Controls survived longer than 5 years without evidence of melanoma recurrence or relapse. Methylation classes, distinguished by consensus clustering of 850K methylation data, were evaluated for their clinicopathologic characteristics, 5-year survival status, and differentially methylated gene sets. RESULTS Among 422 InterMEL melanomas, consensus clustering revealed three primary melanoma methylation classes (MethylClasses): a CpG island methylator phenotype (CIMP) class, an intermediate methylation (IM) class, and a low methylation (LM) class. CIMP and IM were associated with higher AJCC stage (both P = .002), Breslow thickness (CIMP P = .002; IM P = .006), and mitotic index (both P < .001) compared with LM, while IM had higher N stage than CIMP ( P = .01) and LM ( P = .007). CIMP and IM had a 2-fold higher likelihood of 5-year death from melanoma than LM (CIMP odds ratio [OR], 2.16 [95% CI, 1.18 to 3.96]; IM OR, 2.00 [95% CI, 1.12 to 3.58]) in a multivariable model adjusted for age, sex, log Breslow thickness, ulceration, mitotic index, and N stage. Despite more extensive CpG island hypermethylation in CIMP, CIMP and IM shared similar patterns of differential methylation and gene set enrichment compared with LM. CONCLUSION Melanoma MethylClasses may provide clinical value in predicting 5-year death from melanoma among patients with primary melanoma independent of other clinicopathologic factors.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Editorial Board

  JAAD Case Reports · 2023-08-01

  paratextOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Landscape of mutations in early stage primary cutaneous melanoma: An InterMEL study

  UNC Libraries · 2023-08-17 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  It is unclear why some melanomas aggressively metastasize while others remain indolent. Available studies employing multi-omic profiling of melanomas are based on large primary or metastatic tumors. We examine the genomic landscape of early-stage melanomas diagnosed prior to the modern era of immunological treatments. Untreated cases with Stage II/III cutaneous melanoma were identified from institutions throughout the United States, Australia and Spain. FFPE tumor sections were profiled for mutation, methylation and microRNAs. Preliminary results from mutation profiling and clinical pathologic correlates show the distribution of four driver mutation sub-types: 31% BRAF; 18% NRAS; 21% NF1; 26% Triple Wild Type. BRAF mutant tumors had younger age at diagnosis, more associated nevi, more tumor infiltrating lymphocytes, and fewer thick tumors although at generally more advanced stage. NF1 mutant tumors were frequent on the head/neck in older patients with severe solar elastosis, thicker tumors but in earlier stages. Triple Wild Type tumors were predominantly male, frequently on the leg, with more perineural invasion. Mutations in TERT, TP53, CDKN2A and ARID2 were observed often, with TP53 mutations occurring particularly frequently in the NF1 sub-type. The InterMEL study will provide the most extensive multi-omic profiling of early-stage melanoma to date. Initial results demonstrate a nuanced understanding of the mutational and clinicopathological landscape of these early-stage tumors.

  PublisherDOI

• InterMEL: An international biorepository and clinical database to uncover predictors of survival in early-stage melanoma

  PLoS ONE · 2023-04-03 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  INTRODUCTION: We are conducting a multicenter study to identify classifiers predictive of disease-specific survival in patients with primary melanomas. Here we delineate the unique aspects, challenges, and best practices for optimizing a study of generally small-sized pigmented tumor samples including primary melanomas of at least 1.05mm from AJTCC TNM stage IIA-IIID patients. We also evaluated tissue-derived predictors of extracted nucleic acids' quality and success in downstream testing. This ongoing study will target 1,000 melanomas within the international InterMEL consortium. METHODS: Following a pre-established protocol, participating centers ship formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissue sections to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for the centralized handling, dermatopathology review and histology-guided coextraction of RNA and DNA. Samples are distributed for evaluation of somatic mutations using next gen sequencing (NGS) with the MSK-IMPACTTM assay, methylation-profiling (Infinium MethylationEPIC arrays), and miRNA expression (Nanostring nCounter Human v3 miRNA Expression Assay). RESULTS: Sufficient material was obtained for screening of miRNA expression in 683/685 (99%) eligible melanomas, methylation in 467 (68%), and somatic mutations in 560 (82%). In 446/685 (65%) cases, aliquots of RNA/DNA were sufficient for testing with all three platforms. Among samples evaluated by the time of this analysis, the mean NGS coverage was 249x, 59 (18.6%) samples had coverage below 100x, and 41/414 (10%) failed methylation QC due to low intensity probes or insufficient Meta-Mixed Interquartile (BMIQ)- and single sample (ss)- Noob normalizations. Six of 683 RNAs (1%) failed Nanostring QC due to the low proportion of probes above the minimum threshold. Age of the FFPE tissue blocks (p<0.001) and time elapsed from sectioning to co-extraction (p = 0.002) were associated with methylation screening failures. Melanin reduced the ability to amplify fragments of 200bp or greater (absent/lightly pigmented vs heavily pigmented, p<0.003). Conversely, heavily pigmented tumors rendered greater amounts of RNA (p<0.001), and of RNA above 200 nucleotides (p<0.001). CONCLUSION: Our experience with many archival tissues demonstrates that with careful management of tissue processing and quality control it is possible to conduct multi-omic studies in a complex multi-institutional setting for investigations involving minute quantities of FFPE tumors, as in studies of early-stage melanoma. The study describes, for the first time, the optimal strategy for obtaining archival and limited tumor tissue, the characteristics of the nucleic acids co-extracted from a unique cell lysate, and success rate in downstream applications. In addition, our findings provide an estimate of the anticipated attrition that will guide other large multicenter research and consortia.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Editorial Board

  JAAD Case Reports · 2023-05-01

  paratextOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• InterMEL biorepository and clinical database to report methods &amp; best practices_dataset-III

  Harvard Dataverse · 2022-12-13

  datasetOpen access

  Dataset III and dictionary III

  PublisherDOI

• InterMEL: An international biorepository and clinical database to uncover predictors of survival in early-stage melanoma

  medRxiv · 2022-05-23

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Introduction We are conducting a multicenter study to identify classifiers predictive of disease-specific survival in patients with primary melanomas. Here we delineate the unique aspects, challenges, and best practices for optimizing a study of generally small-sized pigmented tumor samples including primary melanomas of at least 1.05mm from AJTCC TNM stage IIA-IIID patients. This ongoing study will target 1,000 melanomas within the international InterMEL consortium. We also evaluated tissue-derived predictors of extracted nucleic acids’ quality and success in downstream testing. Methods Following a pre-established protocol, participating centers ship formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissue sections to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for the centralized handling, dermatopathology review and histology-guided coextraction of RNA and DNA. Samples are distributed for evaluation of somatic mutations using next gen sequencing (NGS) with the MSK-IMPACT™ assay, methylation-profiling (array), and miRNA expression (Nanostring nCounter). Results Sufficient material was obtained for screening of miRNA expression in 683/685 (99%) eligible melanomas, methylation in 467 (68%), and somatic mutations in 560 (82%). In 446/685 (65%) cases, aliquots of RNA/DNA were sufficient for testing with all three platforms. Among samples evaluated by the time of this analysis, the mean NGS coverage was 249x, 59 (18.6%) samples had coverage below 100x, and 41/414 (10%) failed methylation QC due to low intensity probes or insufficient Meta-Mixed Interquartile (BMIQ)- and single sample (ss)- Noob normalizations. Six of 683 RNAs (1%) failed Nanostring QC due to the low proportion of probes above the minimum threshold. Age of the FFPE tissue blocks (p&lt;0.001) and time elapsed from sectioning to co-extraction (p=0.002) were associated with methylation screening failures. Melanin reduced the ability to amplify fragments of 200bp or greater (absent/lightly pigmented vs heavily pigmented, p&lt;0.003). Conversely, heavily pigmented tumors rendered greater amounts of RNA (p&lt;0.001), and of RNA above 200 nucleotides (p&lt;0.001). Conclusion Our experience with many archival tissues demonstrates that with careful management of tissue processing and quality control it is possible to conduct multi-omic studies in a complex multi-institutional setting for investigations involving minute quantities of FFPE tumors, as in studies of early-stage melanoma.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jeffrey F. Scott

  Skin Wellness Center

  58 shared

• Cheryl L. Thompson

  Pennsylvania State University

  55 shared

• Graham J. Mann

  University of Sydney

  53 shared

• Richard A. Scolyer

  Royal Prince Alfred Hospital

  45 shared

• Anne Ε. Cust

  University of Sydney

  45 shared

• Marianne Berwick

  University of New Mexico

  42 shared

• James S. Wilmott

  Melanoma Institute Australia

  42 shared

• Tawny W. Boyce

  University of New Mexico

  40 shared

Education

• M.D.

  Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine