Metastatic Cutaneous Melanoma in a White African Lioness (Panthera leo)

Malignant melanomas tend to be locally destructive, aggressive tumours commonly associated with recurrence and/or metastasis. In this report, a 13-year-old captive white African lioness (Panthera leo), with a recent history of intermittent bouts of lethargy and inappetence, presented with a distended abdomen (due to ascites) and a small, round crusty lesion on the ear. An abdominal ultrasound showed the presence of masses on the liver and an exploratory laparotomy revealed multiple pale lesions on the liver and omentum. Histopathology revealed sheets of pleomorphic neoplastic cells compressing the non-neoplastic liver tissue. Similar neoplastic cells had multifocally expanded and effaced omentum adipose tissue, as well as formed a well-circumscribed mass in the ear sample, extending from close to the epidermis to the lateral and deep margins of the section. All three tissue samples had a high mitotic index (15 per 10 HPF), and critically, in the ear sample, there were rafts of neoplastic cells in the lymphatics, indicating lymphovascular invasion. Immunohistochemistry for the melanoma marker, PNL-2, showed strong positivity in all three tissue samples. Thus, the diagnosis was of malignant melanoma with metastasis to the liver and omentum. This is the first report of metastatic cutaneous melanoma in a lion.