Gene Expression Profiles in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells Can Distinguish Patients with NonSmall Cell Lung Cancer.. Homo sapiens

We report a 29-gene diagnostic signature, which distinguishes individuals with NSCLC from controls with non-malignant lung disease with 91% Sensitivity, 79% Specificity and a ROC AUC of 92%. Accuracy on an independent set of 18 NSCLC samples from the same location was 79%. Samples from an independent location including 12 stage 1 NSCLC and 15 controls, achieved an accuracy of 74%. A study of 18 paired samples taken pre and post surgery shows that the PBMC associated “cancer” signature is significantly reduced after tumor removal, supporting the hypothesis that the signature detected in pre-surgery samples is a response to the presence of the tumor. Overall design: We compared microarray gene expression profiles in PBMC from patients with NSCLC and a control group with smoking-related non-malignant lung disease, a likely confounding factor. We found a distinguishing gene signature which was validated on 2 independent sets of hold-out samples one set from a different location. Gene expression changes were also compared between pre and post surgery samples from 18 patients.