Gene expression in hypoxic non-small cell lung cancer

Hypoxia triggers aggressive cancer growth and contributes to chemotherapy resistance. Novel therapeutic strategies aim at targeting hypoxia activated signaling pathways. Tumor hypoxia not only affects neoplastic tumor cells but also the surrounding stroma cells. Therefore, a novel ex vivo model was established, which allows the study of hypoxia effects in fragments of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with preserved tumor microenvironment and 3D-structure. Microarray analysis identified 107 significantly regulated genes with at least two-fold expression change in hypoxic compared to normoxic fragments. However, only four genes were significantly regulated in both subtypes, adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. The hypoxic regulation of these four genes was verified in an independent set using quantitative PCR. Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) fragments were cultured ex vivo under hypoxia or normoxia for three days. cDNA microarray analysis was performed in hypoxic and normoxic lung cancer fragments from ten patients.