TERT Expression and Clinical Outcome in Pulmonary Carcinoids

The clinical course of pulmonary carcinoids ranges from indolent to fatal disease, suggesting that specific molecular alterations drive progression toward the fully malignant state. A similar spectrum of clinical phenotypes occurs in pediatric neuroblastoma, in which activation of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) is decisive in determining the course of disease. We therefore investigated whether TERT expression defines the clinical fate of patients with pulmonary carcinoid. Bisulphite converted DNA from 24 pulmonary carcinoid tumors was hybridized to the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation850 BeadChip