Expression data from SCEC and corresponding normal samples

Primary SCEC is a rare malignancy without established treatment strategy. Although previous studies suggested that there were similarities between SCEC and SCLC in clinical manifestation and pathological morphology, genetic studies on this highly malignant tumour remained sparse. This study was designed to investigate the gene expression profile of SCEC, and compare it with the known expression data of SCLC and EC. De novo expression array analysis was performed on three pairs of frozen tissues of primary SCEC and corresponding normal samples from institutional tissue bank using the Affymetrix HG U133 plus 2.0 array.After individual normalization, primary tumors were submitted to statistical analysis (GeneSpring GX 12.5) for identifying differentially expressed genes (DEGs) as compared with their paired normal tissues.