CGH profiles of primary colorecal cancer: metastasis-free, liver and peritoneal metastasis

Accurate staging of colorectal cancer (CRC) with clinicopathological parameters is important for predicting prognosis and guiding treatment but provides us no information about organ site of metastases. Patterns of genomic aberrations in primary colorectal tumors may reveal a chromosomal signature for organ specific metastases. Array Comparative Genomic Hybridization (aCGH) was employed to asses DNA copy number changes in primary colorectal tumors of three distinctive patient groups. This included formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue of patients who developed liver metastases (LM; n=36), who developed peritoneal metastases (PM; n=37) and a group who remained metastases-free (M0; n=25).