mRNA expression profiling of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is an Epstein-Barr virus-associated epithelial cancer with high prevalence in Southeast Asia. mRNA expression levels were measured for essentially all human genes and all latent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) genes in nasopharyngeal carcinoma tissue samples and normal nasopharyngeal tissues. Data were analyzed for differential gene expression between tumor and normal tissue and for correlations with levels of viral gene expression. Primary publications: Sengupta et al, 2006, Cancer Research 66(16): 7999-8006. Dodd et al, 2006, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention 15(11): 2216-2225. In subsequent studies using the same set of tissue samples, microRNA levels were measured in tumors and normal tissues and analyzed for correlations with differential target gene expression (Sengupta et al, 2008, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 105: 5874-5878.) Keywords: mRNA expression profiling Total RNA extracted from laser-captured epithelium from 31 nasopharyngeal carcinomas and 10 normal healthy nasopharyngeal tissue specimens.