Genome-wide copy number analysis by Array CGH for the analysis of clonality of thoracic tumors

Multiple synchronous and metachronous lung tumors are frequently encountered in patients with lung cancer. For treatment purposes it is important to determine, whether or not tumors are clonally related. In other words, whether multiple tumors in a patient are either metastases or multiple primaries. Previous reports show considerable discordance between histopathological and molecular comparison of tumor pairs. The purpose of this study is to compare genome-wide copy number analysis to the classical histological and clinicopathological routine for clonality analysis in a prospective cohort of patients with synchronous or metachronous tumors, of which at least one site occurred in the thorax. Two-colour experiment experiment,tumor vs reference. Multiple cases with 2 or more tumors per case.