Development of gene expression signatures for mesenchymal stem cells from neuroblastoma patients

To obtain genetic evidence about the interaction between MSCs and metastatic NB cancer cells in bone marrow (BM), we isolated bone marrow-derived MSCs from children with NB and compared their global expression patterns with MSCs obtained from normal pediatric donors using the Agilent 44K microarrays. A total of eight different donors (four NB patients and four healthy donors) were analyzed and three independent microarrays hybridizations were performed for each donor.