Gene expression analysis of primitive neuroectodermal tumors

Central nervous system primitive neuroectodermal tumors (CNS PNET) and medulloblastomas are both embryonal tumors that predominantly occur in children. We used microarrays to analyse a cohort of CNS PNETs and medulloblastomas to identify gene expression related to tumor subgroups. RNA extracted from 23 frozen tumor samples, plus a commercial fetal brain sample, was analysed using Affymetrix U133 plus 2.0 arrays. Tumour subgroups, based on gene expression, were identified using clustering methods.