Gene expression in early stage cervical cancer

Gene expression profiling of early stage cervical cancer tumours with and without lymph node metastasis, in order to predict lymph node metastasis before treatment. Subsequently, comparing gene expression profiles between healthy cervical tissue and early stage cervical cancer tissue. Keywords: Disease stage analysis All patients had clinical FIGO stage IB-IIA cervical cancer, the low-risk group (N) included 19 patients without unfavourable prognostic factors (positive lymph nodes, parametrial invasion, positive margins or a combination of unfavourable prognostic factors); the high risk group (P) consisted of 16 patients with lymph node metastasis, who were treated with adjuvant radiation therapy with or without chemotherapy. Healthy cervical tissue biopsies (H) were collected from 5 non-cervical carcinoma patients who underwent hysterectomy for benign reasons. RNA pooled from all tumour tissue samples was used as reference sample. Log-ratios of five technical replicates were used for normalization.