Gene expression profiling of colorectal cancers to understand molecular changes and clinicopathological features

Gene expression was analyzed in terms of canonical molecular changes and clinicopathological features to elucidate alternative or subordinate pathways during colorectal tumorigenesis and tumor growth. Eighty-four sporadic colorectal cancer patients, standardized by tumor location, were consecutively enrolled. Representative molecular changes including APC, TP53, Wnt, RAF, and mismatch repair defect (MMR) were recorded for each sample. Keywords: disease state analysis; sub-type analysis within colorectal cancers 84 samples from colorectal patients were analyzed. Paired tumor and adjacent normal tissues from the same patient were used for hybridization onto custom-made, 21k dual channel cDNA arrays. We prepared a similar number of samples from each of the three tumor locations (ascending 27, descending 29, and rectum 28) and recorded for each sample important molecular changes such as APC, TP53, RAF, WNT, and MMR mutations.