Renal Cell Carcinoma Differential Expression

We investigated the changes in gene expression accompanying the development and progression of kidney cancer using 31,500 element complementary DNA arrays. We measured expression profiles for paired neoplastic and non-cancerous renal epithelium samples from 37 individuals. Using an experimental design optimized for factoring out technological and biological noise, and an adapted statistical test, we find 1738 differentially expressed cDNAs with an expected number of 6 false positives. Functional annotation of these genes provided views of the changes in the activities of specific biological pathways in renal cancer. Cell adhesion, signal transduction, and nucleotide metabolism were among the biological processes with a large proportion of genes overexpressed in renal cell carcinoma. Downregulated pathways in the kidney tumor cells included small molecule transport, ion homeostasis, and oxygen and radical metabolism. Our expression profiling data uncover gene expression changes shared with other epithelial tumors, as well as a unique signature for renal cell carcinoma. Expression data for the differentially expressed cDNAs are available in the web supplement (http://www.dkfz-heidelberg.de/abt0840/whuber/rcc). Keywords = renal clear cell carcinoma, kidney Keywords: other