Expression profiling of nasopharyngeal carcinoma cell lines

To identify the deregulated genes which may involved in the carcinogenesis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). To identify potential tumor suppressor genes / oncogenes of NPC, we have employed whole genome microarray expression profiling as a discovery platform to analyze two NPC cell lines, TW01 and HONE1. For the purpose to filter out differential genes may not related to carcinogenesis of NPC, a gene expression database for premalignant nasopharyngeal epithelial cells was obtained from NP460hTert cells, and we used the commercial universal human RNA (stratagene) as common reference for all microarray experiments. A total of 1272 genes were commonly up-regulated (fold change > 2) and 1810 genes were commonly down-regulated (fold change < 0.5) in TW01 and HONE1 cell lines, whereas not deregulated in NP460hTert cells. Four samples including two NPC cell lines (TW01 and HONE1), an immortalized premalignant epithelial cell line NP460hTert, and the commercial universal human RNA (common reference) were analyzed. Differential genes found in NP460hTert were not considered as NPC-related. Biological replicate experiments were performed for each sample.