Gene expression in kidney cancer is associated with cytogenetic abnormalities, metastasis formation, and patient survival.
Current diagnosis of renal cancer consists of histopathologic examination of tissue sections and classification into tumor stages and grades of malignancy. Until recently, molecular differences between tumor types were largely unknown. To examine such differences, we did gene expression measurements of 112 renal cell carcinoma and normal kidney samples on renal cell carcinoma-specific cDNA microarrays containing 4,207 genes and expressed sequence tags. The gene expression patterns showed deregulation of complete biological pathways in the tumors. Many of the molecular changes corresponded well to the histopathologic tumor types, and a set of 80 genes was sufficient to classify tumors with a very low error rate. Distinct gene expression signatures were associated with chromosomal abnormalities of tumor cells, metastasis formation, and patient survival. The data highlight the benefit of microarrays to detect novel tumor classes and to identify genes that are associated with patient variables and tumor properties.
Sültmann
Holger
H
Division of Molecular Genome Analysis, German Cancer Research Center, Im Neuenheimer Feld 580, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany. h.sueltmann@dkfz.de
von Heydebreck
Anja
A
Huber
Wolfgang
W
Kuner
Ruprecht
R
Buness
Andreas
A
Vogt
Markus
M
Gunawan
Bastian
B
Vingron
Martin
M
Füzesí
Laszlo
L
Poustka
Annemarie
A
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000378:metabolism; D002292:Carcinoma, Renal Cell / Q000235:genetics* / Q000401:mortality / Q000556:secondary; D002869:Chromosome Aberrations; D020732:Cytogenetic Analysis; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D006801:Humans; D007680:Kidney Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis
D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor