A robust qualitative transcriptional signature for the early diagnosis of gastric cancer

Pathological examination of gastroscopy biopsy specimens will make false diagnosis for gastric cancer (GC) due to inaccurate sampling locations and/or insufficient sampling amount. We extracted a robust qualitative transcriptional signature, based on the within-sample relative expression orderings (REOs) of gene pairs, to discriminate both GC tissues and adjacent-normal tissues from non-GC gastritis and normal gastric tissues.The qualitative transcriptional signature can be robustly applied at the individual level to aid the diagnosis of early GC. Overall design: Examination of 21 GC specimens from seven GC patients. For each patient, three specimens were sampled from three different tumor locations.