Gene expression signature and the prediction of liver metastasis in colorectal cancer by DNA microarray. Homo sapiens

Samples were taken from colorectal cancers in surgically resected specimens in 189 colorectal cancer patients. The expression profiles were determined using Affymetrix Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0 arrays. Comparison between the sample groups allow to identify a set of discriminating genes that can be used for molecular markers for predicting liver metastasis. Keywords: repeat Overall design: One hundred and eighty nine patients who underwent surgical resection of colorectal cancer were included in this study. Patients were evaluated at 3-month intervals for the first postoperative year and at 6-month intervals thereafter. Liver metastases were identified by clinical and laboratory examination, completed by liver ultrasound or CT scan. Patients were divided randomly into a training and a validation set. A training set consisted of 160 patients, while a test set 29 patients.