A signature predicting poor prognosis in gastric and ovarian cancer represents a coordinated macrophage and stromal-response.. Homo sapiens

Genome wide mRNA expression profiling of 94 gastric tumours derived from Australian based cohort was performed. . From this data we identified a cluster of co-expressed genes termed the stromal response cluster which almost perfectly differentiates tumor from its non-malignant gastric tissue and hence can be regarded as a highly tumor-specific gene expression signature. We show that these genes are consistently co-expressed across a range of independent gastric datasets as well as other cancer types suggesting a conserved functional role in cancer. Overall design: Profiling of 94 primary gastric tumors on Affymetrix GeneChip Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0 Arrays. All tumors were collected with approvals from Peter MacCallum Cancer Center, Australia; the Research Ethics Review Committee; and signed informed patient consent.